LOS ANGELES (CNS) – The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday approved nearly $2.7 million to hire an additional 130 Los Angeles Police Department recruits for the remainder of the 2025-26 fiscal year.
Council members voted 9-4 to approve the spending, which will come from LAPD’s accounts. The City Council agreed to send a proposal to the Personnel and Hiring Committee a proposal that would transfer some of LAPD’s budget auditors to the City Controller’s Office.
Through the action, the council approved a transfer of about $416,246 to hire for positions in the Personnel Department to support sworn police hiring.
Council members Nithya Raman, Ysabel Jurado, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez voted against the matter while their colleagues Curren Price and Bob Blumenfield were absent during the vote.
In December, the City Council approved $1 million to allow LAPD to hire 40 new recruits, who were part of LAPD’s December class. The funding allowed the department to continue hiring while City Council members agreed on a longer funding plan amid budget concerns.
The decision to provide more funding to LAPD for hiring comes after the department already reached 240 new hires halfway through the fiscal year. City Council members and Mayor Karen Bass had set enough money in the 2025-26 budget for 240 recruits.
Bass said in a statement Wednesday that the additional hiring is critical as Los Angeles prepares to host major international events and continues to grapple with historically low police staffing levels.
“Since my first day in office, I have taken a comprehensive approach to public safety, from prioritizing the hiring of more police officers to launching my Office of Community Safety to help prevent violence before it happens and create safe community spaces for Angelenos,” Bass said.
Bass emphasized that she made police hiring a priority in her budget and has continued to push for more officers, noting that the council’s action will allow LAPD to hire about 410 recruits this fiscal year and bring the force to roughly 8,500 officers.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, Bass, and some City Council members have expressed concern about the decline in the department’s sworn personnel due to attrition and competition to outside agencies, among other issues.
As of Jan. 13, McDonnell reported the department had about 8,711 police officers and 2,505 civilian workers.
This new round of funding for police hiring will add about $25 million to the city’s deficit in fiscal year 2026-27.
City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo identified the combined $3 million from with LAPD to pay for new recruits and personnel hires. These dollars were expected to be unused and come from accounts specific to health and wellness programs and general leasing.
The city and the union representing LAPD’s rank-and-file implemented a program, allowing sworn personnel to bank any overtime as unpaid time off. City officials began the program initially to prevent LAPD civilian workers from being laid off, which was part of larger efforts that closed a $1 billion deficit and averted thousands of layoffs.
Szabo noted the program has been successful in generating savings, about $4 million so far, that could be used for new hiring too.
“By the time we are discussing the budget in April, we’ll have a much better idea about how much that could generate on an ongoing basis, and that could be a source of reductions that we could take within the department that could cover the ongoing cost of this additional hiring,” Szabo said.
Councilman Soto-Martinez, who opposed the $2.7 million expenditure, expressed skepticism at the city being able to cover the long-term $25 million.
Szabo said his team was looking at potential cost-saving measures to address budget shortfalls in the next fiscal year. City Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso noted that while her team does not get involved in the mayor’s budget process until the release of it in April, she noted that these cost- saving measures could come from a number of areas.
No further details were provided on such measures. She further noted that the voluntary overtime bank program can generate savings but it also reduces deployment of LAPD officers in the field.
“I always recommend that you stick with the budget that you adopted,” Tso said.
She emphasized that the question before the City Council is whether they decide to hire officers now or in the next fiscal year, which begins in July. Tso added, “It’s just a matter of when.”
Soto-Martinez raised concerns about the impacts approving funding could have on other departments and city services. The councilman had introduced the proposal to transfer some LAPD’s budget auditors to the City Controller’s Office.
He worried the LAPD was not doing enough to account for its own dollars.
“We have hundreds of police officers that can’t even do their job because they’ve committed acts so egregious they can’t interact with the public,” Soto-Martinez said. “That’s really costing us million of dollars.”
He cited figures from a report commissioned by the Public Safety Committee that found LAPD spent $50 million on overtime. The councilman said there needs to be more work done to dig into whether overtime was necessary or not.
“We have 23 police officers doing PR and media relations. Their salaries cost more than the entire budget of nice city departments,” Soto- Martinez added.
Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, who supported the funding, described the action as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
“I want to thank the department for identifying some of the money, but the reality is that there are far greater cost efficiencies that we have to start looking at across the board,” Rodriguez said. “And it’s not just within LAPD.”
Rodriguez added that her colleagues need to have the same conversation on homelessness spending and redundancies that are happening.
The councilwoman also emphasized that the city is in a fiscal crisis. She questioned LAPD Chief McDonnell on a reorganization effort that the council supported long before he was appointed chief.
This effort was intended to maximize the deployment and resources LAPD has, according to Rodriguez.
McDonnell said they took such action six or seven months ago, streamlining detective functions, moving all homicide units into the Robbery- Homicide Division, as well as placing community relations and public engagement officers back in the field.
“You look at us compared to New York or Chicago, we have half the officer to population ratio as they do. We’re doing it here. We’re doing an amazing job with what you’ve given us to do, and yet we’re looking at people making motions to take additional civilians away from us,” McDonnell said.
“We’re 1,400 bodies down from where we were in 2019. We’re going in the wrong direction, and so we are trying to be as efficient as we possibly can, as responsible as we can,” McDonnell added.
The chief also touted record-low crimes across all categories even with less police officers.
“As you’ve heard, homicides are down to levels we haven’t seen since 1966. This department is doing amazing things for the residents of this city, but it doesn’t seem to be appreciated,” McDonnell said.
Rodriguez explained she wanted to better understand deployment decisions, noting a recent effort to rescue animals in Skid Row while the Los Angeles Animal Services Department is underfunded and faces challenges with overcrowding.
She asked the chief to provide more information on the reorganization.
Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, emphasized the funding to support sworn hiring to continue this year.
“There’s no new money in terms of this year’s budget that addresses attrition without creating new impacts in the current fiscal year,” Yaroslavsky said. “My concern has been, and continues to be, the fiscal impact to next year, which as we know, the cost of these additional officers will balloon to $25 million costs.”
“This does put clarity around what comes next with regard to that hiring above the adopted plan… it makes clear that those costs have to be addressed through real offsets within the department, or new revenues, and not through filled civilian position eliminations,” Yaroslavsky added.
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