LA’s Cop Shortage Hits Alarming Low

Two police officers walking on a city sidewalk — Photo: Antonio Gravante / Shutterstock

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell says his department needs 12,500 officers to properly protect the nation’s second-largest city — but it has barely 8,600.

Story Snapshot

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell says the department needs 12,500 officers for full citywide coverage but has roughly 8,500 to 8,700 sworn officers.
Staffing is the lowest it has been in more than two decades, down nearly 1,400 officers from the 2019 peak.
City budget projections show the force could keep shrinking through recruiting shortfalls and retirements.
The shortage arrives as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council are fighting over millions in funding needed just to keep hiring on pace.

Chief Lays Out the Real Numbers

Chief McDonnell told the California Post the Los Angeles Police Department currently has 8,551 sworn officers, far short of the 12,500 he says the city truly needs. “We’re not even in that ballpark,” he said. Los Angeles Times reporting on his April briefing to the Police Commission put the count at 8,677, calling it the lowest sworn staffing level in nearly a quarter century.

McDonnell has also pointed out that Los Angeles has only about half the officers per capita compared with the New York Police Department, and roughly half that of Chicago, a smaller city. He 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 every day.

A Force That Keeps Shrinking, Not Growing

City budget projections show the trouble is not letting up. The department’s fiscal year 2026 budget plan expects to lose another 150 officers through attrition and weak recruiting, which would mark the lowest LAPD staffing in 30 years. Earlier city warnings were even more dire, with officials saying staffing could fall to 8,300 without emergency funding from the City Council.

Fox News reporting ties part of the exodus to falling officer morale and what it describes as anti-police rhetoric from city leaders, saying resignations have piled up as the force shrinks to its smallest size since the 1990s. Whatever the exact cause, the trend line is the same across every account: fewer cops, more retirements, and a recruiting pipeline that cannot keep pace with the losses.

Olympic Deadline Adds Pressure

The timing could hardly be worse. Los Angeles is set to host World Cup matches in 2026 and the Summer Olympics in 2028, and McDonnell has warned that his department lacks both the personnel and the funding to properly prepare for events of that scale. He has told city leaders the LAPD needs roughly 3,300 more officers just to field what he calls “half a team” for the security demands ahead.

Understaffing already shows up in everyday policing. McDonnell has said the LAPD fields around 40 calls an hour tied to homelessness alone, on top of routine crime response, all while working with a fraction of the staff the department once had. Slower response times to lower-level crimes and rising overtime costs are the direct result, according to city reporting.

City Hall’s Funding Fight

Mayor Karen Bass has said she wants to at least keep the department from shrinking further, even as she battles a budget shortfall. Last December, McDonnell warned the City Council that without an immediate 4.4 million dollar allocation, LAPD would be forced to halt new hiring entirely starting in January 2026, driving staffing even lower.

Los Angeles taxpayers spend nearly 2 billion dollars a year funding a police department that its own chief says cannot keep the city safe with current staffing. For a city about to host the world’s biggest sporting events, that is not a minor bureaucratic hiccup. It is a public safety warning from the man in charge, and City Hall has yet to answer it with real solutions.