In response to an ongoing trend of departures from LAPD, weakening the department’s personnel strength, the Los Angeles City Council has approved a four-year contract agreement aimed at improving LAPD officer recruitment and retention through offering raises and bonuses for rank-and-file police officers.
Expiring in 2027, the agreement, raised by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, will increase the starting base salary of LAPD recruits by 13% with a 3% annual increase in base salary wages through the duration of the contract. It will also include retention bonuses and improvements in insurance subsidies for life, health and dental insurance.
According to Police Chief Michel Moore, LAPD’s current personnel strength stands at 9,011 officers, almost 1,000 fewer than 2019. He said this depletion has limited the department’s response to calls for service and impacted its visibility.
“Our response to urgent calls and routine calls, those response times are significantly lengthened, which undermines the public’s confidence in policing,” he explained during a recent police commission meeting. “There’re also critical investigations that are being addressed by prioritizing, but many other investigations that could be pursued, lesser crimes, particularly in the area of property crime, that we do not have the sufficient resources in order to apply.”
He added that 250 of the officers who left the department last year have gone on to serve new agencies, with the “vast majority” of them making a better wage in better work conditions than they were in LA.
“A week does not go by in which a councilmember or other community leader is asking for additional police officers,” Moore said. “Just this weekend, there was a community meeting in the Hollenbeck area following a series of murders. … A 16-year-old boy was murdered as a result of an ongoing gang dispute. … Six individuals had been murdered in that area.
“Violence in this city is far too high and gun violence is particularly still a problem, and our ability to be present in those parks, in those communities, and having a visibility where we’re not simply responding to it afterwards but having presence there in advance, has been significantly compromised.”
The new contract agreement, which was approved after a 12-3 vote in favor, was delivered to the council through a report brought forward by the Office of the City Administrative Officer that outlined three primary objectives: improve recruiting and hiring of new officers, retain new and experienced officers, and incentivize critical public safety functions.
Before the implementation of the contract, LAPD ranked last in starting salaries across the region with a salary of $74,020, placing the department behind the LA County Sheriffs, Burbank, Pasadena, Long Beach, Glendale, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, whose starting salary is $109,392. After the agreement’s approval, the LAPD’s starting salary will be $86,193.
While Moore thanked Mayor Karen Bass and the city council for their commitment to aiding the department and said that he sees the new contract is a “significant step” forward, the three councilmembers who voted against the agreement, Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Nithya Raman, voiced concerns.
“The premise behind this is that LA must provide competitive salaries … in order to be a more attractive employer than other law enforcement agencies in the region,” Raman said. “Unfortunately, the evidence from these other departments doesn’t support that premise because these departments are, almost to a department, also facing recruitment issues and staffing shortages, the exact same issues that LAPD is dealing with, with many of their shortages actually larger than LAPD’s. Beverly Hills has a shortage. Burbank has had a shortage since 2016. Glendale has a shortage. Long Beach has a shortage. Santa Monica has a ‘record shortage.’”
Raman also called the LAPD officer shortage a macro trend that isn’t unique to the region, citing a report from the Police Executive Research Forum which stated that 86% of departments across the United States are also facing shortages. She said that nearly every department across the country has been steadily losing officers at a rate that is “very comparable” to LA.
“This contract, because of its enormous fiscal impact, potentially prevents us from being able to build out an alternative response to nonviolent calls for service, which are the majority of 911 calls, many of which are calls regarding homelessness and mental health issues, a system that if we actually invested in building out citywide, we could actually free up armed response for violent and serious crime,” Raman added. “If we can build out a public safety response that … makes sense for the range of public safety issues that this city deals with, we won’t lose a step when we’re hit with financial crisis or macro trends that cause these shortages in the first place.”
The agreement will increase the city’s police spending to an estimated $3.6 billion by 2027, a nearly $400 million increase from this year. Bass said she believes it’s a price worth paying.
“Our police department, just like other major city police departments, is enduring a hiring and retention crisis,” she said in a statement. “Around the same time that we struck a tentative agreement, the LAPD sworn force dipped below 9,000 for the first time since 2002. I want to thank the leaders of the city council for supporting this action, and I look forward to working together to ensure that Angelenos are safe.”
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n response to an ongoing trend of departures from LAPD, weakening the department’s personnel strength, the Los Angeles City Council has approved a four-year contract agreement aimed at improving LAPD officer recruitment and retention through offering raises and bonuses for rank-and-file police officers.
Expiring in 2027, the agreement, raised by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, will increase the starting base salary of LAPD recruits by 13% with a 3% annual increase in base salary wages through the duration of the contract. It will also include retention bonuses and improvements in insurance subsidies for life, health and dental insurance.
According to Police Chief Michel Moore, LAPD’s current personnel strength stands at 9,011 officers, almost 1,000 fewer than 2019. He said this depletion has limited the department’s response to calls for service and impacted its visibility.
“Our response to urgent calls and routine calls, those response times are significantly lengthened, which undermines the public’s confidence in policing,” he explained during a recent police commission meeting. “There’re also critical investigations that are being addressed by prioritizing, but many other investigations that could be pursued, lesser crimes, particularly in the area of property crime, that we do not have the sufficient resources in order to apply.”
He added that 250 of the officers who left the department last year have gone on to serve new agencies, with the “vast majority” of them making a better wage in better work conditions than they were in LA.
“A week does not go by in which a councilmember or other community leader is asking for additional police officers,” Moore said. “Just this weekend, there was a community meeting in the Hollenbeck area following a series of murders. … A 16-year-old boy was murdered as a result of an ongoing gang dispute. … Six individuals had been murdered in that area.
“Violence in this city is far too high and gun violence is particularly still a problem, and our ability to be present in those parks, in those communities, and having a visibility where we’re not simply responding to it afterwards but having presence there in advance, has been significantly compromised.”
The new contract agreement, which was approved after a 12-3 vote in favor, was delivered to the council through a report brought forward by the Office of the City Administrative Officer that outlined three primary objectives: improve recruiting and hiring of new officers, retain new and experienced officers, and incentivize critical public safety functions.
Before the implementation of the contract, LAPD ranked last in starting salaries across the region with a salary of $74,020, placing the department behind the LA County Sheriffs, Burbank, Pasadena, Long Beach, Glendale, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, whose starting salary is $109,392. After the agreement’s approval, the LAPD’s starting salary will be $86,193.
While Moore thanked Mayor Karen Bass and the city council for their commitment to aiding the department and said that he sees the new contract is a “significant step” forward, the three councilmembers who voted against the agreement, Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Nithya Raman, voiced concerns.
“The premise behind this is that LA must provide competitive salaries … in order to be a more attractive employer than other law enforcement agencies in the region,” Raman said. “Unfortunately, the evidence from these other departments doesn’t support that premise because these departments are, almost to a department, also facing recruitment issues and staffing shortages, the exact same issues that LAPD is dealing with, with many of their shortages actually larger than LAPD’s. Beverly Hills has a shortage. Burbank has had a shortage since 2016. Glendale has a shortage. Long Beach has a shortage. Santa Monica has a ‘record shortage.’”
Raman also called the LAPD officer shortage a macro trend that isn’t unique to the region, citing a report from the Police Executive Research Forum which stated that 86% of departments across the United States are also facing shortages. She said that nearly every department across the country has been steadily losing officers at a rate that is “very comparable” to LA.
“This contract, because of its enormous fiscal impact, potentially prevents us from being able to build out an alternative response to nonviolent calls for service, which are the majority of 911 calls, many of which are calls regarding homelessness and mental health issues, a system that if we actually invested in building out citywide, we could actually free up armed response for violent and serious crime,” Raman added. “If we can build out a public safety response that … makes sense for the range of public safety issues that this city deals with, we won’t lose a step when we’re hit with financial crisis or macro trends that cause these shortages in the first place.”
The agreement will increase the city’s police spending to an estimated $3.6 billion by 2027, a nearly $400 million increase from this year. Bass said she believes it’s a price worth paying.
“Our police department, just like other major city police departments, is enduring a hiring and retention crisis,” she said in a statement. “Around the same time that we struck a tentative agreement, the LAPD sworn force dipped below 9,000 for the first time since 2002. I want to thank the leaders of the city council for supporting this action, and I look forward to working together to ensure that Angelenos are safe.”
