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LOS ANGELES (CNS) — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass urged the L.A. City Council to find $4.4 million for additional new police recruits beyond 240 officers that were authorized earlier in the year amid concerns about public safety and preparations for upcoming mega events starting next year.
On Wednesday, Bass sent a letter to council members calling on them to identify and allocate funding for the Los Angeles Police Department to hire 410 officers by the end of the fiscal year in June 2026. While some council members expressed a willingness to support this effort, there’s also concerns about how and where the money will come from.
City officials have already projected a starting deficit of $91 million in the coming 2026-27 fiscal year.
LAPD is hiring at an accelerated rate, with the department on track to hire approximately 480 officers.
In April, Mayor Bass signed off on a $14 billion budget that scaled back police hiring as part of solutions to address a nearly $1 billion dollar deficit caused by overspending, liability costs and other challenges. Elected officials closed that shortfall, and also averted proposed layoffs through a strategy involving negotiations with labor unions, among other actions. Workers are expected to take five unpaid days off, and some police officers are banking overtime as time off as part of negotiated concessions with the city.
As part of the budget, the City Council and Bass authorized the hiring of 240 new recruits. Bass approved the spending plan with an agreement with Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson to find more dollars to increase police hiring. Bass requested a report in 90 days to identify funding, but that deadline passed with no follow up identifying where those dollars should come from.
“Our number one job as city leaders is to keep Angelenos safe. Without the $4.4 million funding, the Los Angeles Police Department will stop hiring in January,” Bass wrote in her letter to the City Council.
She argued that stopping the hiring of new police officers would have “drastic” and “lasting consequences” for the city, such as not having new cadets in the police academy in January, an increase in overtime hours and costs for officers, and strain sworn personnel with longer shifts and more responsibilities.
“The second largest city in the United States cannot have an effective police department with 8,300 officers — levels not seen since 1995,” Bass wrote in her letter.
Bass touted her efforts to boost LAPD hiring of officers, noting leadership changes at the personnel and police departments. She issued executive directive No. 14, which detailed efforts to streamline police hiring. These efforts, in part, resulted in a record number of applicants interested in working for LAPD. December recruitment classes have 56 cadets, levels not seen since before the coronavirus pandemic, she added. As the second-largest city with a population of nearly 4 million, the LAPD has about two officers for every 1,000 residents, according to the Mayor’s Office.
New York has a police force of 36,000 sworn officers, and Chicago has approximately 11,600 sworn officers for a population of 2.7 million.
We cannot knowingly and willingly increase the demands on our officers while reducing their workforce to the lowest levels in more than 20 years, levels not even seen during the Great Recession,” Bass wrote in her letter. Los Angeles cannot protect our families, cannot grow our economy and cannot welcome the world without a strong police department.”
The Los Angeles Police Protective League Board of Directors, the union representing LAPD officers rank lieutenant and below, supported the mayor’s call to action. The directors noted that with police hiring on the right track, “it would be the worst time for the City Council to tell recruits that Los Angeles doesn’t want them.”
“It is completely unacceptable to inform 56 police recruits who have spent the last year going through an extensive and costly background process by the LAPD that their January academy class is cancelled,” the LAPPL Board of Directors said in a statement. “Officers on the street need to know that when they call for back-up, there will be other officers to respond, and residents need to know that when they call 911, police officers will be there for them.”
While Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, and Councilman Tim McOsker, chair of the Personnel Committee, supported LAPD’s growth, they emphasized the importance of fiscal solvency.
“Our job is to keep the city safe. We also have a responsibility to keep it solvent. I want to grow the police department, but I have yet to see a proposal that identifies an ongoing funding source to pay for more officers,” Yaroslavsky said in a statement. “Responsible leadership means telling the truth about our finances and insisting on a real plan to pay for new commitments. I will support this proposal once a real proposal exists.”
McOsker, a former attorney who previously represented LAPPL, agreed that public safety is their highest priority. He agreed with Bass six months ago when she proposed to work with council to find more dollars for more officers, and now six months later, “this matter remains a proposal with no funding identification,” the councilman said in a statement.
Earlier this week, the City Council’s five-member Budget and Finance Committee met, where they discussed the second financial status report. It was also the first time the committee heard a cost estimate for LAPD’s additional hiring.
“We need approaches that hold up next year and the year after,” Yaroslavsky said during Tuesday’s meeting.
City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo reported the annual cost for additional officers would be closer to $24 million. The initial $4.4 million would serve as partial-cost for hiring mid-year. If the department reaches 480 new recruits, the cost increases more than $6 million for hiring mid-year, and approximately $33.5 million for annual, ongoing, spending. Szabo confirmed there has not been a formal report issued to the committee identifying funds for additional hiring.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell joined the committee and defended his department’s hiring.
“It was our understanding, as the CAO mentioned, the money would be found by who is yet to be determined, I guess from what I hear today, that we would be able to hire an additional 240 if we hired 240 in the first six months,” McDonnell said. “We’re in a position two and a half years out from the Olympics. We’re down 1,300 police officers. We’re down over 500 civilian, professional staff, and we’re authorized today for 240 for the year, and we’re going to lose 550. We’re bleeding out. So yeah, we took advantage of what we were told to do, and we did a heck of a job getting there.”
McDonnell also touted that crime in all categories are down in the city even though the department is struggling with staffing levels. City officials discussed the potential of tapping into the city’s reserve fund to cover $4.4 million, though overall the idea was frowned upon.
“We should never, as a practice, assume the use of the reserve fund for hiring police officers. That’s an ongoing expense that should never be an assumed use of the reserve fund,” Szabo said. “I cannot recommend in stronger possible terms that the budget process be used to determine how much hiring we are actually going to fund. This body and the mayor need to make that decision, and then actually need to fund the amount of hiring that we intend to do.”
McOsker, a member of the budget committee, emphasized the work they did to avert layoffs. The committee was against future layoffs or impacts to workers, but proposed examining potential programs to reduce to fund police hiring.
“What’s the point of going through the budget process if there’s going to be executive directives that conflate with what we’re trying to do or say something that’s being translated differently,” Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez said during Tuesday’s meeting.
The committee instructed Szabo to return to them in January with a funding proposal.
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