By Chris Tyler, Communications Manager
July 10, 2026
On Sunday, June 14, the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust organized a community planting day at the Jefferson Park and Affordable Housing Project. Together with community partners, volunteers, and youth fellows, they gathered to celebrate the successful conversion of a vacant lot into a lush native plant garden.
During the program, eight law enforcement officers from agencies including the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrived on site and blocked an entrance to the garden with police vehicles. One community member, who had been flying a small drone at low heights to capture aerial footage of the event, was detained, questioned, and issued a federal citation of $130. Allegedly, the drone was flying in violation of federal-level Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFR) that had just gone into effect for the FIFA World Cup. Suddenly, the drone operator was, unknowingly, in violation of federal airspace—and was deemed a threat to national security because of the event’s proximity to the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, site of the official World Cup’s opening weekend FIFA Fan Festival™. The drone was confiscated as “evidence,” and, as of today, has yet to be returned.
No one involved in June’s community planting day was notified of the TFR in advance, either via app notification, officer interaction, or more widespread public messaging. As members of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust shared in their comment on the incident, “It is unreasonable to expect average Angelenos to instantaneously be aware of megasports event schedules, our relative distance from them down to the tenth of a mile radius, and the temporary federal restrictions that go into effect without widespread notice.”
Thankfully, the community’s resilience allowed those gathered to move through the disruption and calmly conclude the planting day. But incidents like these exemplify the kind of aggressive policing we can expect to increase in both frequency and intensity in the lead up to the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.
For one, these games are designated as a National Special Security Event, or NSSE—a security designation given to the highest-profile gatherings that authorities deem a “potential target for terrorism or other criminal activity.” Under an NSSE, authority over security and policing is transferred from local law enforcement to the federal government. And if the 2028 games proceed as planned, they will mark the largest and most logistically rigorous NSSE in history—meaning an intensification of militarized policing and surveillance the likes of which Los Angeles has not yet experienced.
To make matters worse, authorities typically leverage the NSSE designate to justify the hiring of thousands of law enforcement officers from outside agencies to work the event. When officers from outside agencies enter local jurisdictions, it can inflame community relations, erode trust, and further diminish procedural accountability, especially in use-of-force scenarios. In 2024, during the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin (another NSSE), out-of-town police officers from Ohio shot and killed Samuel Sharpe, an unhoused man experiencing a mental health crisis near the convention site.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Sharpe’s sister, Linda, remarked “They came into our community and shot down our family right here at a public park! What are [Ohio police] doing in our city, shooting people down?” Another neighbor, David Porter, noted “If [Milwaukee police] would have been there, that man would still be alive right now.”
Moments like these illustrate the complex and compounding ways that intensifications of policing directly harm our neighbors, especially when non-local officers from outside agencies are added to the mix. Which makes it all even more disheartening that Mayor Bass is backing a bill in the California Legislature that would pave the way for hundreds, if not thousands, of out-of-state officers to relocate to Southern California for the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.
LAPD’s current estimates indicate that they will be understaffed by more than 4,000 officers on the busiest Olympic game days—when they are looking to deploy upwards of 6,700 total officers across the city. By comparison, approximately 1,200 officers are typically on patrol in L.A. over the course of any standard 24-hour period. Most of the $1.15 billion in estimated security costs will be allocated towards hiring these officers, who are being promised “premium rates” in exchange for supplementing the existing work force. Apparently, LAPD is also considering shutting down its police academy for part of 2028 in order to deploy hundreds of officers, who would otherwise be leading recruitment activities, for the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. This could, in turn, significantly disrupt LAPD’s hiring operations for years to come.
No matter how you slice it, everyday Angelenos will continue to absorb the costs—fiscal, psychological, and potentially physical—of L.A.’s unevenly planned and aggressively executed intensification of policing in preparation for mega events like the World Cup and Olympics. The only truly safe option is cancellation.
SAJE is a proud member of the NOlympics LA coalition, organizing to oppose the excessive harms of the 2028 Summer Olympic Games and other mega events. To learn more, visit NOlympicsLA.com
