Police Chief Issues Damning Pleas After Officers Quit!

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell says his department needs roughly 12,500 officers to properly patrol America’s second-largest city, but it has barely 8,500 on the payroll right now.

Story Snapshot

Chief Jim McDonnell says the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) needs about 12,500 sworn officers for full coverage but has only around 8,551 to 8,677, depending on the count date.
Staffing has fallen to its lowest point in nearly 30 years, down roughly 1,400 officers from the department’s 2019 peak.
The shortage arrives as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.
City leaders and the chief disagree over how fast, and how much, the force can realistically grow given budget limits.

A Department Shrinking While the City Grows

McDonnell told the California Post that Los Angeles is “not even in that ballpark” when it comes to adequate police coverage. The department currently counts about 8,551 sworn officers, far short of the 12,500 he says the city truly needs. That gap has widened for years as retirements and resignations outpaced new hires, even as Los Angeles’ population and public events keep growing.

The chief has also compared Los Angeles to other big cities. He said the LAPD’s officer-per-resident rate is half of what the New York Police Department (NYPD) maintains, a striking gap for a city of four million people. Fewer officers per resident means slower response times, more overtime for the officers who remain, and less proactive patrolling in neighborhoods that once saw regular police presence.

Lowest Staffing in a Generation

Los Angeles Times reporting from an April 2026 Police Commission briefing put sworn staffing at 8,677, the lowest total in nearly 25 years. Fox News reported the force had shrunk below 9,000 by the end of July, a level not seen since the 1990s, as officers resign amid low morale. Budget projections for fiscal year 2026 show the department expects to lose more officers than it hires, settling around 8,620, the weakest staffing in three decades.

Mayor Karen Bass has said her goal is simply to stop the bleeding rather than grow the force right away. She told the Times she is focused on maintaining current staffing amid a tight city budget, even as crime numbers have trended downward. That defensive posture frustrates critics who argue a shrinking department cannot keep pace with a city bracing for two of the largest sporting events on earth.

Olympic Pressure Raises the Stakes

Los Angeles hosts World Cup matches this year and the Summer Olympics in 2028, events that will draw enormous crowds and international attention. McDonnell has warned the city needs roughly 3,300 more officers to handle that load safely, calling the current force “half a team” facing an Olympic-sized threat. Security planning for a global event typically requires years of staffing buildup, not a scramble in the final stretch.

In December 2025, McDonnell told city officials that without an emergency funding allocation, the department would be forced to halt new hiring entirely, sending staffing down to about 8,300 officers, the lowest level in three decades. The council ultimately weighed the request against other budget priorities, illustrating how public-safety funding competes with every other city expense in a stretched municipal budget.

Surprised he did an interview with California Post

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell just put an extraordinary number on what it would take to adequately police America’s second-largest city: 12,500 officers.

The LAPD currently has 8,551.

https://t.co/DmgmkXDDhl

— Make L.A. Great Again 🇺🇸 (@lalovestrump) July 26, 2026

A Familiar Standoff Over Priorities

McDonnell says the department is down about 1,400 officers from its 2019 high point, a drop he calls a serious setback for a force already stretched thin. This kind of standoff is not new to big-city policing: chiefs warn of a crisis, and city halls respond with fiscal caution and competing budget demands. What sets Los Angeles apart is the ticking Olympic clock, which leaves little room for years of gradual rebuilding.

Conservative voters have long argued that public safety should top the list of core government functions, ahead of discretionary spending on other programs. A department bleeding officers for years while the city debates a few million dollars in emergency hiring funds suggests priorities badly out of order. Angelenos deserve a police force built for the city they actually live in, not the smaller one City Hall can afford to fund.