LOS ANGELES—School buses in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have become the most recent target for catalytic converter thefts, rekindling a debate over whether the district should increase its budget for school police patrols.
Catalytic converters—a device that mitigates toxic exhaust emission—have been stolen from about 160 LAUSD school buses since January, costing the district roughly $581,000 so far, CBS reported May 26.
Though it can take the district up to four weeks to replace a bus’s catalytic converter, an LAUSD spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that “student transportation has not been negatively affected by the unfortunate thefts.”…