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Growing the LAPD was gospel at City Hall. George Floyd changed that.
Some city leaders signaled that this could be a starting point for broader changes. “These times demand a more careful reflection of our city’s priorities and values — no single department should be exempt from review,” Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez said.
The plan to cut the police and other departments to fund new social service programs arose only in recent days, so details remained scarce. Garcetti acknowledged the proposal was being shaped at “light speed” and said he hoped for more details by Friday.He said the new funds would specifically address “structural racism” against black people. He said the money will be taken from other sources “to put it into health, to put it into hope, to put it into housing and to put it into healing.”“I know that there’s some who call for defunding or having fewer police officers,” Garcetti said at a news briefing Sunday. “I’ve always seen the departments, the more that they’re underfunded, the worse things can happen.” But Wednesday, a group of labor and community leaders criticized Garcetti for what they saw as the overly aggressive response by the LAPD to protesters who have flooded streets in the last week following Floyd’s death. The leaders wrote a letter asking Garcetti for a cut of “at least” $250 million from the Police Department’s $1.8-billion budget.Among the groups calling for the changes were local chapters of the powerful Service Employees International Union, United Teachers Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, or LAANE. Some coalition leaders followed up by meeting Garcetti at City Hall. They urged Garcetti not to repeat the mistakes that followed the civil unrest of 1992, in which the hardest-hit communities languished for many years, with few improvements. “This is no time for half-measures that do not acknowledge the central importance of anti-Black racism to this crisis,” the coalition’s letter said. “Investments must be targeted to the specific people and communities that have been most impacted by over-policing, using data that specifically calls out race — not divided equally between council districts as in the politics of the past.” The call for reducing police spending, in favor of other priorities, marked a notable departure from the city’s politics ever since the 1992 riots that followed the acquittal of four police officers involved in the beating of a black man, Rodney King.Businessman Riordan won the mayor’s office in 1993 with a pledge to increase the LAPD by nearly 3,000 officers, to 10,000. His campaign slogan? “Tough enough to turn L.A. around.” His successor, former City Atty. James Hahn, pledged to add more police. And civil rights activist Villaraigosa pledged to complete Riordan’s mission of building a 10,000-officer LAPD, a mark achieved in 2013. “If you look at the arc of the city’s history for three decades, there is a tectonic shift here with this growing constituency for reform,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former city and county lawmaker and now instructor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “There is the emergence of this multiracial coalition of people, who have formed a powerful constituency, and they are making their voices heard.” Leaders of the union that represents Los Angeles police officers said they found the shift abrupt and disingenuous. Los Angeles Police Protective League officers said they had a phone conference Wednesday with Garcetti and council members Rodriguez and Curren Price.The political leaders said they wanted to talk to the union about changes to the police budget but then, before those discussions occurred, announced their intention to make cuts, according to the union. “In the private phone call, the politicians praised our officers’ work and professionalism,” said Jerretta Sandoz, vice president of the police union. “During their TV spectacle, they placed the blame of Los Angeles’ social problems squarely on the shoulders of our officers. It was hypocritical and political doublespeak of the highest order, and we refuse to participate in this charade.” In a statement, Sandoz added: “It was one of the most craven, disingenuous political sleights of hands we have seen in some time.” Garcetti’s supporters said he had repeatedly praised police in the field, noting that a letter sent to all city employees Thursday thanked officers for doing their job “selflessly and honorably.”Those who built the LAPD to its current size recalled that a bigger force had been promoted as one that would treat citizens more humanely. Reformers said that the old Police Department had been forced into a command and control model because it did not have time to get to know citizens and communities.
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