When she ran for mayor four years ago, Karen Bass said she wanted to grow the Los Angeles Police Department back to the 9,500-officer force it was before the ranks were decimated. Now up for re-election – and facing a budget shortfall – Bass says his plans have changed.
In a recent interview, he told the Times that the purpose of the move was to prevent the department from getting smaller.
As of this week, the department had 8,677 sworn personnel — the lowest number in nearly a quarter century. Despite efforts under bass two Streamline hiring and boost recruitingSome officers are concerned that there won’t be enough new policemen to replace those who leave or retire in the coming years.
“Unfortunately my goals changed,” Bass said. “I hope that one day we will reach expansion, but we are not there yet.”
A spokesperson for Bass said after the interview that the mayor is committed to reaching the 9,500-officer benchmark in the long term, but did not give a timeline for getting there.
On April 20, Bass will release his spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1. He and the City Council will work in the coming months on how to balance the city’s books in a way that avoids drastic cuts to other services and layoffs of city employees. An estimate by a city administrative official estimated the city’s budget deficit to be “several hundred million”.
Bass said he has spent years clearing a long-standing administrative bottleneck within the city’s personnel department, which runs the background process for police hires.
The efforts were targeted “at every level: at the top, as well as internally within the department,” Bass said. “At least the barriers that prevented us from retaining recruits, getting them into the academy, have changed.”
The mayor called the old hiring process “outdated” and said similar issues exist with other city departments. At the LAPD, he said, “We expanded recruiting and hired record numbers, and then we couldn’t hire them, so we had to reform the hiring process.”
Despite the decline of the LAPD in recent years, crime has declined, with homicides in the city falling to levels not seen since the 1950s. Yet public safety remains an issue in the mayor’s race, where Bass faces a challenge from City Councilwoman Nitya Raman.
A recent poll co-sponsored by The Times found that more than half of voters view Bass unfavorably in the race. The same poll found that 39% of Angelenos think the size of the LAPD needs to be increased, 29% say the department should remain the same size and 19% say it should be smaller.
Raman came out ahead of Bass in a recent poll, which identified candidates in the mayoral race only by their platform but not by name, although other polls identified them by name, showing Bass ahead.
Raman has said that he believes the police force, with approximately 8,700 officers, is the right size. While Bass’ one-time aide has argued that the mayor has thrown too much money at the LAPD, Raman claims this approach has come at the expense of other basic services like park maintenance and road paving.
Raman has accused the mayor of signing off on a pay increase for police officers with a contract that has had no impact on the department’s recruiting struggles and has only made the city’s financial picture worse. He and other critics say that with declining police numbers, authorities need to begin investing more in community-led efforts that prioritize prevention over punishment to further reduce crime.
Bass said he has adopted a crime-fighting strategy that balances traditional policing with a more public health-oriented approach, adding that he has opened a Community Safety Office to support gang interveners who help defuse neighborhood conflicts before they explode into violence. His administration also led the way in sending mental health teams or other unarmed responders to emergency calls that were once deployed by police.
It’s no accident, he said, that murders have dropped by 27% in some of the most crime-hit neighborhoods. So far this year, police say most crime categories have declined compared to where they were at this point in 2025.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell has said the city’s progress on crime is at risk without addressing police staffing, especially as L.A. prepares to host large-scale sporting events like the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.
During his briefing to the Police Commission on Tuesday, McDonnell said about 8% of the department’s employees are unavailable to work because they are on sick leave or other work restrictions. McDonnell and other police officials have said that understaffing is limiting the department’s ability to respond quickly to low-level crimes, increasing officer burnout rates and increasing overtime expenses.
Asked to assess McDonnell’s first year and a half as the city’s top lawman, Bass issued a written statement saying she considered McDonnell a strong partner in “reducing crime, hiring more officers, and reversing long-standing trends.”
She added, “I will always inspire every city leader to do better by the people of Los Angeles.”
Bass said she would continue to work with the chief to “identify ways” to reduce the number of police shootings, particularly those involving people in crisis.
Such changes would go hand in hand with an overhaul of the department’s much-maligned disciplinary system, which has faced criticism from some corners for not meting out harsh enough punishment when officers shoot unarmed people. The union representing rank-and-file members of the department has long complained of double standards that exempt well-connected officials and senior leaders.
Bass said that based on his conversations with officers, “the internals of the disciplinary system have gotten a little better.”
Wider reforms are also under discussion, with the council considering new limits on so-called police sham stops, in which officers use a minor infraction as justification to pull someone over and then investigate whether a more serious crime has been committed. Bass said he is in favor of further changes to tighten LAPD policies.
recently published report A study by Catalyst California, a group that advocates for racial justice, found that such stops have continued to disproportionately impact Black and Latino drivers, even as the LAPD has reduced their use over the past decade.
“Certainly, when I was younger, I experienced excused stops, and they are appalling,” Bass said, adding that she believes the department’s culture is already changing. “I will tell you that in all the roll calls I have been to, a lot of officers already feel like they can no longer pretend (to stop) — so I think there has been progress there, but clearly there is a lot more to do.”
Times staff writerS David Zanisser and Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.
