When she ran for mayor four years ago, Karen Bass said she wanted to grow the Los Angeles Police Department to a force of 9,500 before the ranks begin to shrink. Now up for re-election — and facing a budget crisis — Bass says his plan has changed.
The goal going forward, he told The Times in a recent interview, is to stop the door from being too small.
As of this week, the department had 8,677 sworn personnel — the lowest number in nearly half a century. Even after efforts under Bass to streamline hiring and encourage hiring, some officials worry there won’t be enough new officers to replace those expected to leave or retire in the coming years.
“My goal changed, unfortunately,” Bass said. “I hope that one day we will get to the expansion, but we are not there now.”
The spokesman for Bass said after the interview that the mayor is still committed to reaching the number of 9,500 workers in the future, but did not give a time to get there.
On April 20, Bass will release his spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1. He and the City Council will spend the coming months looking at how to balance the city’s books in a way that avoids deep cuts to other services and layoffs of city employees. The city manager estimates the city’s budget shortfall as “several hundred million.”
Bass said he has spent years addressing a long-standing administrative problem in the city’s human resources department, which handles the police hiring process.
The efforts were targeted “at all levels: at the top, as well as within the department,” Bass said. “At least the obstacles that prevented us from keeping employees, to put them in school, have changed.”
The mayor called the old hiring process “antiquated,” and said similar problems exist in other city departments. At the LAPD, he said, “We increased recruitment and had a record number of officers, and then we failed to hire them, so we had to restructure the hiring process.”
Despite the tightening 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 mayoral race, where Bass faces a challenge from City Council Member Nithya Raman.
A recent poll sponsored by The Times found that more than half of voters viewed Bass negatively in the race. The survey found that 39% of Angelenos think the LAPD should increase in size, 29% say the department should stay the same and 19% say it should shrink.
Raman came out ahead of Bass in a recent poll that identified mayoral candidates only by their platforms, but not their names, although other polls that identified them by name showed Bass in the lead.
Raman said he believed there were about 8,700 police officers. A colleague of Bass’s who once argued that the mayor threw too much money at the LAPD, a way Raman said came at the cost of other basic services like park maintenance and street paving.
Raman accused the mayor of signing a proposal to increase the police force with a contract that did nothing much in the department’s employment struggle and made the city’s financial situation worse. He and other critics say that as the number of police officers shrinks, officials need to start investing more in community-led efforts that prioritize prevention over punishment to reduce crime.
Bass said he has adopted a crime-fighting strategy that balances traditional policing with a public health approach, noting that he opened the Office of Public Safety to support gang interventionists who help defuse neighborhood disputes before they turn violent. His superiors also took the lead in sending mental health teams or other unarmed responders to emergency calls that were once fielded by police.
It’s not an accident, he said, killing people in other crime-affected areas has dropped by 27%. So far this year, police say most crime categories are down compared to where they were at this time in 2025.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said without talking to police officers the city’s progress on crime is at risk, especially as LA prepares to host major sporting events like the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.
During his speech to the Police Commission on Tuesday, McDonnell said that about 8% of the department’s employees are not available to work because they are on sick leave or other work restrictions. McDonnell and other police officials said staffing shortages are reducing the department’s ability to respond quickly to low-level crimes, leading to high levels of staff burnout, and increasing overtime costs.
Asked to assess McDonnell’s first year and a half as the city’s top attorney, Bass released a statement that said he views McDonnell as a strong partner to “reduce crime, hire more officers, and reverse old practices.”
He added: “I will always push every City leader to do better for the people of Los Angeles.”
Bass said he will continue to work with the chief to “identify ways” to reduce the number of police shootings, especially those involving people in difficult situations.
Such changes would be accompanied by an overhaul of the department’s much-maligned correctional system, which has been criticized in some quarters for not issuing harsher penalties when police shoot unarmed people. The union that represents the members of this department has long been complaining about the double standard of letting go of officials who are well connected to top leaders.
Bass said that based on his conversations with officials, “the internal part of the disciplinary system has gotten a little better.”
Broader reforms were also discussed, with the council weighing new restrictions on so-called police stops, where police use minor infractions as a reason to pull over someone and then investigate whether a more serious crime has occurred. Bass said he agrees with other changes to strengthen the LAPD’s policies.
A recent report by Catalyst California, a racial justice advocacy group, found that such stops have continued to negatively impact Black and Latino drivers, even as the LAPD has reduced their use over the past decade.
“Of course, when I was young, I had to deal with standing the wrong way, and it’s scary,” Bass said, adding that he believes the department’s culture is changing. “I will tell you that many of the calls I have received, many officials already feel as if they cannot make speeches. [stops] and – so I think there’s been progress there, but there’s still a long way to go.”
Times staff writers David Zahniser and Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.
