The Los Angeles Police Department has graduated an average of 31 recruits in its last 10 academy classes, according to a Times review, about half the number needed to keep up with Mayor Karen Bass’s ambitious plan to reach 9 500 agents.
The smaller-than-expected classes — coupled with the number of experienced officers retiring or leaving for other jobs — have fueled speculation around City Hall and LAPD headquarters about whether Bass would reevaluate the department’s staffing needs in its new budget proposal, due Monday.
City officials said they would need to hire about 60 new officers per month to reduce the force’s attrition rate.
The mayor gave no timetable for her plan to recruit police officers. But statistics indicate the force is unlikely to be increased from 8,832 sworn officers currently to 9,500 in the near future.
Given the city’s ever-deteriorating financial situation, some progressive leaders and activists argue it doesn’t make sense to continue funding the department for staff it may not be able to to hire.
A Times analysis of promotions data and press releases posted on the department’s website found that 309 recruits have graduated from the LAPD academy since July 1. During the same period, the department lost 552 officers to retirement, firing or resignation — with 113 more expected to do so. leave by June 30, the end of the budget year, according to a spokesperson.
While these numbers do not reflect all recent hires or departures, taken together they give a general sense of the scope of the department’s personnel problems.
Acting Chief Dominic Choi acknowledged those difficulties in an interview this week with NBC Nightly News, saying heavier workloads have contributed to low officer morale and forced residents to wait longer for police service. Understaffing also led to more agents working overtime in Los Angeles and other cities, further straining budgets.
This “slippage” in response times, Choi said, was particularly evident for non-emergency calls, which went “from about 20 minutes to 40 minutes, even an hour.”
“I think if we had about 12,000, we would have a good complement,” Choi said, echoing a figure cited by former Chief William J. Bratton in 2002 as the minimum the department needs to patrol the city correctly.
A U.S. Justice Department study released last fall suggests that reasons for the “historic crisis” in police personnel include increased public scrutiny of police conduct, high rates of burnout among officers and a tighter labor market since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. .
The LAPD’s recruiting woes come at a time when cities across the country, facing similar staffing problems, are rethinking the role police should play.
Even with fewer police officers, crime rates have declined nationally in recent years. However, so far this year, the number of homicides in Los Angeles has increased compared to the first four months of 2023, bucking a trend seen in other major cities. Other types of crime are down in Los Angeles, and Choi noted during his weekly briefing to the Police Commission that the homicide rate has slowed in recent weeks.
With the Olympics and World Cup looming as security challenges in the years to come, whoever is named the next LAPD chief — a nationwide search is underway — will be asked to bolster its staffing levels.
The attrition numbers are down from the 2020-21 fiscal year, when the department lost 577 officers due to a slowdown in police recruiting amid protests following the killing of George Floyd. But since then, academy classes have failed to keep up with the number of officers leaving.
Commission Chairman Erroll Southers told the Times that the department’s briefings for potential recruits were always well attended. If anything, he said, half-filled classes are more a sign of the department’s high standards than a lack of interest in people wanting to join the LAPD.
“The reason we don’t have 60 recruits is because we don’t take just anyone, so I’m OK with that,” he said. “I’m very proud of it, because it means our standards are still the same. »
At the same time, Southers said, the reality of a “lean LAPD means we have to look at these alternatives to police response.”
“There are a number of things that officers could answer, that civilians could answer, that clinicians or social workers could answer, and that trained medical professionals could answer,” he said.
The Times review found that the largest class to graduate from the LAPD academy since July included 36 officers; the smallest, 25. Latino recruits were overrepresented relative to the city’s population, while Asian American and white officers were underrepresented, according to the analysis. Class sizes are up slightly from the previous 10-month period, during which the department graduated about 29 officers, according to the analysis.
During the six-month academy, entry-level officers receive 912 hours of training in areas such as firing weapons, defensive driving and de-escalation techniques. The application process requires a lengthy background check, which adds another challenge to recruiting, officials say.
Department and city leaders have tried various tactics to woo recruits in recent months.
The LAPD recently hired a new marketing company, using a mix of public and private funding, that is more digitally focused and will help the department “target a younger demographic,” officials told the commission from police. The department also offers monetary incentives to officers who refer successful recruits to advance through the academy to graduation.
Other efforts have stalled.
A plan to temporarily bring back retired officers to fill vacant positions has had little success, with only a handful of retirees joining.
Although Bass acknowledged that she was not “very confident” in the LAPD’s ability to reach 9,500 officers, her office remained silent on whether she would change her goal. A recent report from the city’s top budget analyst said the LAPD would likely end the year with 8,908 officers, the lowest sworn deployment in more than two decades.
For some elected officials and progressive groups, the staffing shortage presents an opportunity to invest money intended to pay officers toward increasing positions for social service workers who could better respond to nonviolent calls involving mental illness, l homelessness or substance use. The city has launched several pilot programs in recent years, but proponents say those efforts are undermined by insufficient funding.
“Spending a lot more money on the LAPD has so far failed to recruit more or increase staffing levels, and what we need is a holistic alternative response,” Nithya said Council member Raman, one of three council members to vote against the officer pay raises.
Raman recently won reelection over an opponent who received enormous financial support from unions representing police officers and firefighters, among other groups.
A spokesperson for Bass previously said that while the mayor has not ruled out cutting some of the thousands of unfilled municipal jobs to balance the city’s budget, any reductions would have no impact on police officers.
Los Angeles is not alone in experiencing difficulties when it comes to recruiting police officers. A recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum found that in most places, hiring has not kept pace with attrition, leading to a nearly 5% decline in total police staffing to nationally.
Lobbying for more officers has become something of an annual ritual within the LAPD, which is historically one of the nation’s smallest big-city departments per capita.
The department’s workforce peaked at 10,072 for a few weeks in January 2019. It had initially reached the symbolic threshold of 10,000 officers, sought by former city and department leaders, in 2013, near the end of the mayor’s term. Antonio Villaraigosa.
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