Exclusive | LAPD’s top cop reveals staggering extent of police shortage

The Los Angeles Police Department’s officer shortage has gone from bad to worse — with the city’s top cop revealing that he has lost hundreds of officers in recent months while trying bolster the beleaguered force by a staggering 4,000 more.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell exclusively told The California Post that the department’s uniformed force currently stands at about 8,550, down about 200 officers from February when the LAPD had more than 8,700 cops.

McDonnell also revealed that the LAPD currently needs about 12,500 cops to ideally safeguard the city, updating a previous estimate of about 12,000 officers that he cited to the Post in February.

“We would be able to provide the best coverage possible with 12,500 officers. We’re not even in that ballpark. We currently have 8,551 for officers that are on the job today,” he said.

“When somebody comes into this organization from another organization as a lateral, they can’t believe what we get done with the number of people we have,” he added.

California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton called the revelation “shocking and scandalous.”

“It is totally unacceptable for America’s second city to be starved of law enforcement in this way,” he told The California Post. “This is what happens with years of a far left ideology that tries to systematically undermine law enforcement in the name of ‘criminal justice reform’ — defund the police, close the prisons, catch and release. It all adds up to massive demoralization of the brave men and women who put themselves at risk to keep us safe.”

In February, McDonnell said LA needed 12,000 officers just to function safely — a staggering 38% increase, or roughly 3,300 more cops from staffing levels at the time. The new 12,500 figure represents an ideal level, he said, enabling the department to achieve the best possible results with major events like the 2028 Summer Olympics expected to bring millions of people to the city.

Instead, the City Council approved funding to hire up just to 410 officers this fiscal year, a move one senior department source described as “a drop in the bucket.”

A bloc of Democratic Socialists of America councilmembers have been openly hostile to the LAPD, with member and now mayoral candidate Nithya Raman opposed to any increases to the department’s budget and pushing to shrink its role.

“We are thankful that we are not dealing with a Mayor Raman, who has repeatedly voted to cut funding to hire police officers and has no real plan to keep Angelenos safe,” Tom Saggau, spokesman for the city’s largest police union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, told the California Post.

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In April, Mayor Karen Bass announced that she was dialing back her once-ambitious plan to rebuild the LAPD and is now aiming to simply to stop the bleeding.

“My goal changed, unfortunately,” Bass said of her intention to bring police headcount to 9,500 officers.
“I do hope that one day we get to the expansion, but we are not there now.”

The LAPD had just 26 graduates in its June 2026 class, not nearly enough to offset the 500 to 600 officers LAPD officials have said the department loses per year through attrition.

“People don’t want to be police officers because the profession has been relentlessly criticized,” said George Francisco, longtime member of LAPD Pacific Community-Police Advisory Board. “Organized and well-funded anti-law enforcement campaigns, coupled with years of negative media coverage, have created a stigma around policing that discourages many young people from considering it as a career.”

The largest size the Los Angeles Police Department ever reached was approximately 10,023 sworn officers in 2013.

Bass has moved to address the current shortage by reducing the amount of time to conduct background checks on new hires and increasing the starting pay for rookie officers.

Under Bass’s union contract with the LAPD, the starting annual base pay for new police recruits is $86,192, an increase of about 13% from previous rates.

The mayor has also provided incentives for senior officers to stay on the force, Saggau said.

“We support Mayor Bass’s initiatives to grow the ranks of the LAPD,” he told The Post.

“Public safety is the most important service that the City of Los Angeles provides to its residents, businesses, and visitors — especially ahead of major sporting events,” the mayor’s office said in a statement to The Post. “Even in light of the City’s financial environment, Mayor Bass has fought to prioritize public safety and streamline the hiring process for LAPD officers through executive action. Mayor Bass’ long-term goal is to continue to rebuild the ranks of the LAPD.”

McDonnell said the LAPD’s dwindling size has forced the department to find new ways of boosting efficiencies while continuing to grapple with a shrinking staff.

He cited the use of drones as an important tool for boosting the impact of the department, calling the new technology “a force multiplier.”  

Drones have already saved police from responding to hundreds of unneeded calls for service, department officials said. Last year, the small, unmanned aircraft responded to more than 3,000 calls.

McDonnell said the drones provide police with information that prompts stations to cancel dispatches of officers about 11% of the time, because the officers aren’t really needed.

“We can do a video downlink and we can see that what was reported is not there,” he said.  “And so that saves us time for the units, tying up a unit on a call that’s not a real call.”

With the World Cup in now the rearview mirror and the Olympics on the horizon, McDonnell said the LAPD has become a model of efficiency for police in other U.S. cities.

“Because of the way we police, we’re extremely efficient,” he said. “We’re able to do a lot more with fewer people, and we’ve been doing it for so long that that has become the way we do business.”

Despite the LAPD’s shrinking size, the department has continued to see crime levels drop. The most recent figures show that personal and property crimes in LA are down about 8% year-over-year.

“When you compare LA with New York or Chicago, they have four to four and a half officers per thousand population. We have 2.2,” McDonnell said. “So we are exceptionally lean.”