Nithya Raman cannot seem to decide what she is doing about the LAPD and its chief, Jim McDonnell.

During her press conference last week, she dodged questions about his future. Helpfully, she declared that “public safety is the most important service that the city is delivering to its people … hands down.” 

But Raman clearly has some odd ideas about how to achieve public safety.

She infamously called on the city to “defund the police” during the riots of 2020.

Then she backtracked — before appearing in a video that called the police, and McDonnell, “fascist.”

The platform of her political organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, calls for the city to “[r]eplace armed law enforcement officers responding to traffic enforcement and mental health crises with unarmed alternatives.”

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters

And, of course, Raman has supported calls to “abolish ICE” — the federal government’s interior immigration law enforcement agency.

Like it or not, ICE has been a huge benefit to big cities like LA. Under President Donald Trump, ICE has deported criminals and gangsters who were in the country illegally. That has reduced crime and freed local police to focus on local troublemakers.

You can disagree with ICE’s tactics, but it provides a necessary function.

After Raman suggested firing McDonnell — for the supposed crime of protecting ICE agents who were being assaulted by rioters — a parade of law enforcement leaders spoke out against the idea.

Former LAPD chief Bill Bratton warned that firing McDonnell could lead large numbers of officers to quit — at a time when the department is already woefully understaffed.

With the Olympics looming, that could spell disaster for the city.

If the mayor-elect is serious in her belief that public safety is the most important function of government, then she would do well to place her trust in the existing leadership of LAPD.

She might even ask Karen Bass for advice. 

Bass failed in many ways, but she did preside over a drop in crime.

She was no pushover on the issues of racial justice that Black Lives Matter raised in 2020.  

After all, she was the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus at the time. 

But Bass also understood racial justice meant better policing, not fewer police.

LA has always thrived when its leaders have prioritized law and order.

We have made so much progress in recent years. We cannot turn back on that progress — not with so much at stake.