LAPD Chief Says Department Has Lost 200 Officers Since February, Needs 4,000 More

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell says his department is smaller and further from its staffing goal than it was five months ago. In an interview with the New York Post, McDonnell put the current uniformed force at about 8,550 officers, down roughly 200 from the more than 8,700 the department had in February 2026.

The gap between what LAPD has and what McDonnell says it needs has also widened. Back in February, McDonnell told the Post the department needed about 12,000 officers to function safely, a 38% jump from staffing at the time. Now he's citing 12,500 as the number needed to provide what he calls the best possible coverage.

"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," McDonnell told the Post.

McDonnell framed the current headcount as remarkably efficient given the shortfall. "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 said.

What the City Is Actually Funding

Despite the chief's numbers, the Los Angeles City Council approved funding this fiscal year to hire up to only 410 additional officers. One department source described that figure to the Post as "a drop in the bucket" against a 4,000-officer gap.

That funding level reflects a real, ongoing fight at City Hall over how big LAPD should be. A bloc of city councilmembers aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America has pushed to limit police funding growth and shrink the department's footprint. Councilmember Nithya Raman, now a mayoral candidate, has voted against increases to LAPD's budget and has said she wants a smaller role for the department, according to the Post.

Tom Saggau, spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers, told the Post: "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."

The Case for Caution on the Numbers

Police staffing targets set by police chiefs are not neutral scientific figures. They come from the agency asking for more resources, and "ideal coverage" is inherently a judgment call, not a fixed threshold like a bridge's weight limit.

Advocates for reduced police budgets, including some on the City Council, argue that public safety can be achieved through a mix of policing, social services, mental health response teams, and violence intervention programs, not through officer headcount alone. That's a legitimate policy position, even if the sourcing here doesn't include a named advocate laying out that case in detail.

Losing 200 officers in five months while the city's population and event calendar are only growing is a straightforward staffing problem, whatever the right target number turns out to be. The size of the funding gap approved by the council—410 new hires against an estimated 4,000-officer shortfall—is a fact about this year's budget, not a debatable projection.

Steve Hilton's Framing

California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton called the shortage "shocking and scandalous," telling the Post it reflects "years of a far left ideology that tries to systematically undermine law enforcement in the name of criminal justice reform." Hilton is a Republican candidate running in a statewide race, and his comment is a campaign-trail characterization, not a neutral assessment. It's fair to note his political stake in framing LA's staffing gap as a story about progressive policy failure, even where the underlying staffing numbers he's citing are accurate.

What Comes Next

The stakes attached to this staffing gap aren't abstract. Los Angeles is set to host part of the 2028 Summer Olympics, an event expected to bring millions of visitors to the city, and McDonnell's 12,500-officer target is explicitly built around handling that kind of surge alongside normal patrol duties.

With the council's 410-hire allocation locked in for this fiscal year, the practical question is whether LA's next budget cycle, and its next mayor, will move the needle before 2028 arrives. Raman is currently running for mayor with a stated record of opposing LAPD budget increases, which means this staffing fight is likely to be a central issue in that race.