LAPD projects to defund the city further by overhiring officers, drawing ire from city council.

LA City Councilmembers were not too happy with the LAPD at Wednesday's Budget and Finance Committee. The councilmembers were informed the department anticipates going over budget by overhiring officers this fiscal year. The LAPD says they are projected to overspend their hiring budget by $3.56 million in an attempt to hire 410 officers, a 170 overage of the 240 officers allotted in this fiscal year's budget.

The numbers come from the first Financial Status Report (FSR) of this fiscal year, prepared by City Administrative Officer Matthew Szabo and presented to the committee.

The department apparently took the “it's better to ask for forgiveness than it is permission” route for going over budget, but the councilmembers weren't in a forgiving mood.

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky was seemingly baffled about the decision made by the LAPD and pointed out the city and mayor agreed on 240 officers, not more.

Frustrated, she continued and pressed both officers from the department's Fiscal Group and City Administrative Officer Szabo about whether funds had been identified to cover the costs.

The answer was: nope!

Councilmember Tim McOsker joined in on the dressing down of the department's bold hiring move.

“We have to be grown-ups here. Every dollar has 100 pennies, and the budget has to mean something.”

The once LA Police Protective League lobbyist, McOsker, said he's more than happy to hire more officers, but the funding needs to come first.

On September 11th, Mayor Karen Bass issued an Executive Directive to speed up the hiring of more officers. Part of the directive included an agreement with the City Council that gave them a 90-day timeline to find additional funds for an extra 240 officers. The 90-day timeline passed and the funding was never found, according to McOsker in the meeting.

The LAPD's statement for this story affirms they have not yet identified funding to cover the overages those hires would cost the city.

“While the City's adopted budget authorizes 240 new recruit officers, the LAPD is working with the City Administrative Office to identify funding for an additional 240 hires for the second half of the current year.”

The hires, they said, are important to address the dwindling police force and to prepare for the upcoming FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics.

They better find the money soon; otherwise, the rest of the city and the workers who run it will be forced to carry the financial burden placed on them by the department.

Any overspending by the department will come out of the general fund, forcing the city to further cut services and potentially fire more city workers in the coming fiscal year. A problem the city largely avoided by coming to an agreement with labor unions representing city workers. The concessions made included workers taking unpaid holidays and using overtime to cover paid time off. The agreements saved 600 jobs of the estimated 1,600 that were on the chopping block.

“At what point are we going to be real about what is happening, and at what point does the chair of personnel tell the director of personnel to stop hiring new officers or start firing people?” said Yaroslavsky.

The Budget and Finance Committee voted to give the LAPD more time to start searching the couch cushions for money to cover the deficit.

I reached out to McOsker's and the LA Controller's offices for a comment but did not receive any by the time of publication. I will update the story if that changes.

You can read the first financial status report (FSR) of this fiscal year here.

You can listen to the full, frustrated exchange here:

She's not my biggest fan.

The city's budget is already hurting, with estimated revenues down and skyrocketing expenditures. One of the largest expenditures defunding Los Angeles are the growing liability lawsuits and the millions of dollars in settlement payouts. As I previously reported this week, the LAPD is responsible for the largest share of payouts. Over $400 million has been paid out since 2019 in lawsuits related to police shootings and civil rights violations. Car collisions and cases of workplace harassment and retaliation aren't far behind in the lawsuit categories.

I broke down why this keeps happening and if there are any solutions the city could take to minimize the lawsuits in my reporting for LA Public Press.

But apparently Mayor Karen Bass didn't read my story, because when a person asked her at a recent town hall (that wasn't well publicized) about the $400 million in payouts, she attempted to refute my reporting, saying “we would be bankrupt," if the numbers were true.

They're true, Karen!

From the story:

No word from her office yet, but if she wants to check my work, she can head over to the Controller's website and check out the data portal. You can too, if you'd like.

City of LA Liability Claims Dashboard - Interactive Data Analysis

Interactive dashboard analyzing City of Los Angeles liability claims and payouts from FY2020 to FY2025. View comprehensive data, trends, and statistics.

City of Los Angeles ControllerCity of Los Angeles

Well intentioned, but misguided.

I am getting sick of talking about press freedoms in Los Angeles. It's an exhausting, unnecessary battle to fight. I've been trying since 2020 to get the LAPD to obey the law and keep journalists safe while doing our job. The fruits of my labor and the collective labor of other journalists have been minimal. But the recent injunction against the department and the city's $250,000 new attempt to fight against it in court has spotlighted the issue, and now city council is getting into the press freedom fight. Thankfully, it's on the side of the journalists.

Councilmembers on the Public Safety Committee sent out several motions that seek to resolve the issues between the LAPD and journalists on the ground at protests. One by Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado pitches an outreach effort by the department on how to obtain LAPD-issued press passes. It also recommends creating agreements between multiple press groups and the city that formalize appropriate conduct on how the LAPD interacts with the press during protests.

The full motion is here:

While I appreciate the efforts, I disagree strongly with the Jurado motion. The main issue facing journalists at protests isn't the lack of press passes—officers have shot at and arrested people with them on. They'll call you fake press, too. The issue is the department's conduct and disregard of state law, an injunction, and the Constitution without any consequences.

Also, the department should not be in the business of telling who can and can't be a journalist, especially when they already call us “fake press” while shooting at us.

The better of the two is this one by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield that requests the City Attorney and council draft “substantive limitations” on non-lethal use of force against anyone, journalist or not. He points to a preliminary injunction placed on the department in 2021 following the well-documented cases of excessive use of force used against protesters at Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. History repeats and repeats and repeats, etc.

It's a pretty simple problem to figure out. Eliminating the excessive and unnecessary use of force by police puts an end to trying to decide who is and isn't press before shooting someone.

Or, as this op-ed puts it:

Los Angeles city attorney to press: drop dead

Why does the city attorney hate the press so much she literally wants ink-stained wretches — and their contemporary multi-media cousins — shot by the police?

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