TO INSPECT AND SERVE WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

After 2020's protests, eyes turned to city budgets. Can controllers' audits change policing?

- MAGGIE DUFFY AND MADISON PAULY

ONE NIGHT IN late January, Los Angeles' brand new controller, Kenneth Mejia, zipped up an official windbreaker with a city seal on the left breast, and walked out of City Hall to police headquarters. Mejia, an athletic 32-year-old with a background in left-wing organizing, stood watching at the edge of a vigil to memorialize Tyre Nichols, whose deadly beating by Memphis cops had just been released on video. Officers and cruisers showed up en masse at the gathering, as they would at a series of demonstrations that unfolded over the next several days. Through it all, Mejia and his team did their job: They conducted "on-the-ground" monitoring, keeping eyes on the cops' expensive show of force.

In November, Mejia, who is Filipino American, won a sweeping victory with a data-based campaign focused on police spending, blasting stats on TikTok and on billboards across the city. The former tenant rights organizer and accountant is now essentially the city's auditor and paymaster. Mejia doesn't have the power to reduce the LAPD budget. But he does have the authority to review its finances and performance and a talent for turning his findings into memes.

Keeping eyes on police at the Nichols protests is an example of how he plans to go about the job. "These things have a lot of big money involved," Mejia says, smiling broadly in the empty press room where he and his team film TikToks, like his recent announcement of an audit of the city's recordkeeping and spending on homelessness.

Three years ago, the murder of George Floyd led to widespread calls to defund law enforcement and reallocate money to social programs. While the marches have ended, a drive to follow the money has animated activist campaigns to democratize municipal spending and realign city budgets with community priorities.