{"id":5398,"date":"2026-07-26T10:07:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T10:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5398"},"modified":"2026-07-26T10:07:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T10:07:55","slug":"los-angeles-needs-more-cops-city-squanders-money-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5398","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles needs more cops; city squanders money elsewhere"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell just put an extraordinary number on what it would take to adequately police America\u2019s second-largest city: 12,500 officers.<\/p>\n

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The LAPD currently has 8,551.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not even in that ballpark,\u201d McDonnell told the California Post in an exclusive interview.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles is nearly 4,000 officers short of what its own police chief says would provide the best possible coverage. And things are moving the wrong way: The department has lost about 200 officers just since February.<\/p>\n

For years, politicians in Los Angeles debated how much policing the city could do without. McDonnell has now posed the opposite question: How much policing does Los Angeles actually need?<\/p>\n

Consider how large 12,500 is. The largest LAPD has ever been was about 10,000 officers, in 2013. McDonnell isn\u2019t talking about simply restoring what was lost. He says Los Angeles needs a police force roughly 25% larger than the biggest LAPD in history.<\/p>\n

Compared with other major cities, 12,500 isn\u2019t an unreasonable number. McDonnell notes that New York and Chicago have four to four-and-a-half officers per 1,000 residents. Los Angeles has 2.2.<\/p>\n

How did things get this bad?<\/p>\n

LAPD loses 500 to 600 officers a year. Los Angeles isn\u2019t hiring enough replacements, much less the thousands of additional officers McDonnell says are needed.<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t happen by accident.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles cut $150 million from LAPD in 2020 amid the \u201cdefund the police\u201d movement. And Los Angeles voters elected politicians who wanted to go even further.<\/p>\n

Council members Hugo Soto-Mart\u00ednez and Eunisses Hernandez, both aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, have repeatedly opposed efforts to increase police spending and hiring. Soto-Mart\u00ednez has identified as a police abolitionist. Hernandez has described herself as an \u201cabolitionist organizer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Council member Ysabel Jurado was caught on tape saying \u201cf\u2014 the police\u201d shortly before taking office.<\/p>\n

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Recruiters say council members\u2019 open hostility toward police only makes hiring harder.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s council member and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, who faces Karen Bass in November\u2019s runoff. Raman entered city politics declaring \u201cDefund the Police\u201d and advocating that LAPD become a \u201cmuch smaller, specialized armed force.\u201d She now says the city should maintain its current under-resourced police force.<\/p>\n

Maintaining 8,500 officers when the chief says Los Angeles needs 12,500 isn\u2019t a public-safety plan. It\u2019s accepting the shortage as permanent.<\/p>\n

Mayor Bass, meanwhile, once promised to rebuild LAPD to 9,500 officers.<\/p>\n

Higher recruit pay, faster background checks and retention incentives have all been tried on Bass\u2019 watch. The department continues to shrink anyway.<\/p>\n

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By April, Bass had shelved that 9,500 target for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal changed, unfortunately,\u201d Bass acknowledged. \u201cI do hope that one day we get to the expansion, but we are not there now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her shelved goal was already 3,000 officers below what McDonnell says Los Angeles needs.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s own budget makes the problem plain. It funds 510 new officers this fiscal year, essentially enough to offset expected departures. City budget officials project LAPD will have about 8,555 officers next summer \u2014 almost exactly where it is today.<\/p>\n

The excuse, inevitably, will be money.<\/p>\n

Yes, nearly 4,000 additional officers would be expensive. But Los Angeles operates on an annual budget approaching $15 billion. LAPD\u2019s direct departmental budget is roughly $2.1 billion, plus additional costs associated with overtime, pensions and other expenses.<\/p>\n

Budgets are choices.<\/p>\n

And public safety should come before plenty of things City Hall currently chooses to fund. That is what priorities are supposed to mean.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles can afford to devote more of its resources to police protection. What City Hall cannot do is spend the same dollar twice. More cops mean spending less somewhere else.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what governing is.<\/p>\n

Protecting lives and property, maintaining public order and responding to 911 calls are among the most basic responsibilities of local government. If McDonnell says 12,500 officers are needed, City Hall needs to decide whether that responsibility takes precedence over some of its other spending priorities.<\/p>\n

And the clock is ticking. In two years, LAPD expects to dedicate roughly 2,400 officers to the 2028 Olympic Games while policing the rest of Los Angeles. The eyes of the world will be on Los Angeles, understaffed and unready.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The staffing problem is so severe that the department has discussed shutting down academy classes for roughly seven months and temporarily reassigning more than 300 officers from its training division.<\/p>\n

Think about that. Los Angeles may stop training new cops because it doesn\u2019t have enough cops. You can\u2019t build an experienced police force overnight.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Then there is November.<\/p>\n

Angelenos will choose between Bass, who has shelved for now even her 9,500-officer goal, and Raman, who entered politics advocating a much smaller LAPD and now favors maintaining its depleted ranks.<\/p>\n

McDonnell says Los Angeles needs 12,500 officers.<\/p>\n

Neither candidate is proposing anything close.<\/p>\n

And that leaves Angelenos with two candidates for mayor, neither of whom is making public safety the first priority of city government.<\/p>\n

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com<\/em><\/p>\n

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The police chief says Los Angeles needs 12,500 officers. Neither Karen Bass nor Nithya Raman proposing anything close. And that leaves Angelenos with two candidates for mayor, neither of whom is making public safety the first priority of city government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nLos Angeles needs more cops; city squanders money elsewhere - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5398\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Los Angeles needs more cops; city squanders money elsewhere - Metro Transit Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The police chief says Los Angeles needs 12,500 officers. 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