Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivered her first State of the City address Monday. The mayor addressed her plan to rebuild the Los Angeles Police Department amid ongoing struggles to recruit and maintain officers. David Zahniser covers City Hall for the LA Times. He joined Amrit Singh on “LA Times Today” with more on what’s driving the decline and how the mayor plans to fix it.
Cities across the country like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia are also seeing declines in their police forces. Zahniser explained where LA’s police force stands.
“The mayor says she wants to grow the LAPD to 9,500 officers in the next budget year. So that’s up about 400 from where it was just last week. But over the past four years, the department has lost nearly a thousand police officers,” Zahniser said. “Former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made growing the department the centerpiece of his administration and got them above 10,000 right before he left. Since COVID, all of those hiring gains have been erased.”
The city plans to address the shortfall in a few different ways.
“Partly by hiring new officers and partly by bringing back retired officers, at least for a limited period of time. But the city is also looking at hiring bonuses. They’re looking at speeding up the recruitment process and making it easier for officers to move from other departments into the LAPD,” Zahniser said.
Some of LA’s more progressive leaders see the declining numbers as an opportunity to invest in other programs.
“What they have been doing is arguing that this is an opportunity that the city should not be spending on police hiring, but more on other programs like mental health teams, homeless shelter beds, and unarmed responders to respond to people who are having crises that are not violent in nature. They say this really provides the city a chance to shift more money over to those other programs, which they say also make communities safe and can lift the burden from the LAPD,” Zahniser explained.
Bass’ proposed budget will be announced Tuesday. The City Council will then decide whether to approve her proposals or amend them.
Watch the full interview above.
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