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.
