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Los Angeles needs more cops; city squanders money elsewhere

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Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell just put an extraordinary number on what it would take to adequately police America’s second-largest city: 12,500 officers.

The LAPD currently has 8,551.

“We’re not even in that ballpark,” McDonnell told the California Post in an exclusive interview.

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.

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?

Consider how large 12,500 is. The largest LAPD has ever been was about 10,000 officers, in 2013. McDonnell isn’t talking about simply restoring what was lost. He says Los Angeles needs a police force roughly 25% larger than the biggest LAPD in history.

Compared with other major cities, 12,500 isn’t 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.

How did things get this bad?

LAPD loses 500 to 600 officers a year. Los Angeles isn’t hiring enough replacements, much less the thousands of additional officers McDonnell says are needed.

This didn’t happen by accident.

Los Angeles cut $150 million from LAPD in 2020 amid the “defund the police” movement. And Los Angeles voters elected politicians who wanted to go even further.

Council members Hugo Soto-Martínez and Eunisses Hernandez, both aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, have repeatedly opposed efforts to increase police spending and hiring. Soto-Martínez has........

© New York Post