More police officers. More firefighters and paramedics. And … pickleball courts.
Those were among the wishlists of some Los Angeles City Council budget committee members as they discussed city department budgets for the upcoming fiscal year on Thursday, April 27.
In addition to combating L.A.’s homeless crisis, Mayor Karen Bass has prioritized public safety in her $13 billion citywide budget proposal. Chief among those priorities, she hopes to hire hundreds of officers over the next fiscal year to rebuild the city’s shrinking police force.
The Los Angeles Police Department has lost more than 900 sworn officers since 2019, dipping below 9,100 sworn officers today, LAPD Chief Michel Moore reported in a letter to the budget committee last week. The mayor wants to bring that number up to 9,504 by the end of June 2024.
Bass has proposed increasing the LAPD’s budget by just under 1%, or about $18.5 million, to $1.89 billion. That increase would provide funding to aggressively recruit new hires, including nearly $3.65 million in sworn officer hiring bonuses and $50,000 for a job referral program. Specifically, Bass has proposed awarding up to $15,000 in bonuses to new officers and up to $2,000 to city employees who refer people to join LAPD.
The LAPD is also looking at tapping about 200 recently retired officers to return for up to 12 months while the LAPD builds up its staff through new, permanent hires.
The department has proposed 13 police academy classes, each comprised of 60 recruits, to help increase LAPD’s number of police officers. Factoring in attrition, the department hopes to net an increase of more than 400 sworn officers.
A few councilmembers asked the police chief whether it was realistic to expect to hire hundreds of new officers, given how much the department has struggled in recent years to hire employees.
“Can I just get a reality check on that? When was the last time we had a 60-person class?” Councilmember Tim McOsker…
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