The Los Angeles City Council convened on Friday, April 4, 2025, at 9:30 AM. The meeting featured a series of presentations honoring long-serving city staff, youth programs, a championship basketball team, and LAPD reserve officers who served at the Paris Olympics. The council also conducted routine approvals, heard public comments, and adjourned in memory of activist Father Richard Estrada.
Dragon Parade organized by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles. Today's a perfect example of what it looks like when community comes together. We have legislators from all levels of government here. We have community organizations, people who do dance and different arts and crafts coming together to provide a beautiful parade for the community. It's an incredible honor to be the ground marshal of this parade because my grandfather is the founder of Los Angeles, China Bell. So the meeting together, Chinatown with the Dogs is a pretty engage. What it does is it brings everybody in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County together to celebrate one of the many rich cultures that we have here. The Chinese New Year this year is specifically talking about resiliency, for example. And resiliency is what the city of Los Angeles, the county of Los Angeles needs right now because of how horrifically the year started with us with the natural disaster that we experienced. As a matter of fact, that's why they were kind enough to put this event off so that we can still try to recover from that. But collectively, whether it's law enforcement, government, our community, we're gonna need each other as we move forward. We're celebrating the year of the snake, which is strong, resilient, compassionate, and we want to give a big hello to everybody. So thank you, Los Angeles. Thank you, Chinatown, and let's have a good time. Happy morning to everybody. We're here, obviously, to try and maintain safety for everybody, but also to be part of the community to enjoy the event and to help celebrate the great tradition of this community and be able to develop a network and a partnership moving forward to benefit public safety throughout the city. We want to make sure that everybody respects every community, every culture, every language, every food. That's who we are in Los Angeles. That's what the parade is about. And it had to be delayed temporarily. But the wildfires are a good example of how we bag each other up, how we help each other. That's what today is all about. Young Hey Fat Choi, happy new year to all the members of our community. Make sure that if you haven't to come by Chinatown, come by from those local businesses, come and enjoy this space. We need to do whatever we can to make sure that our Chinatown thrives, and the way we do that is by coming and partaking in this space. Price gouging is a concept that came about after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. And what happens in the wake of a disaster or an emergency is that there are always speculators and profiteers who come in and try to buy stuff up and raise the cost. So price gouging is an effort to profit off disaster or someone else's tragedy by raising the cost of necessities by more than 10%. And it's a crime. So don't raise prices by more than 10%, is the short message. It's not a victimless crime. It's the kind of behavior that is the antithesis of what we as Angelino showed we were in the wake of these fires. Most of us pulled together. Most of us were there helping each other. So for those few who are out there violating the penal code and trying to make a profit at the expense of people who just lost everything. If you experience prize gouging, you can report it to the city attorney through the MyLA 311 app. Who knew that jujitsu could offer so much to healthcare professionals and our LEPD? This self-defense system and martial art uses leverage and positioning rather than size or strength, and it's become an effective tool for law enforcement. Take a look. Look at this. What's going on today is the safe wrap system. Uh we brought Hannah and Hedon Gracie from Grayson University to uh teach our in-service instructors and outside agencies and our civilian medical staff, the safe wrap technique that they've been teaching for over a year now. I like this one to try practice with. It also gives Bernardo something to hold on to, as we just say, the supports I would be going weak. Initially it was only meant for health care, but it was so effective that law enforcement soon saw the technique and they said, hey, not only does that look safer than what we're currently using, it actually looks more effective than the methods of restraint we're currently teaching our officers. So now you have a technique that is safer for civilians and officers, but also more effective tactically, and that's what makes the safe rap system so unique. Once he only enters in the rear, you circle for the void, and he drops his inside me. And he calls Zed. And then I walk him down. And we're here.