Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is expected to announce that she has selected Jim McDonnell to serve as the city’s next police chief, ending a months-long search process and filling the void for the nation’s largest police force. A new era will begin for one of the departments.
In choosing the longtime lawmaker — who helped enforce the federal consent decree as LAPD assistant chief and was later elected Los Angeles County sheriff — Bass was asked to help as the massive security challenges of the World Cup and Olympic Games continue to unfold. Getting it. ,
However, the appointment of McDonnell, who is white, came as a surprise – and a disappointment to some – who had expected Bass to appoint the city’s first Latino or woman as chief.
Bass is set to formally announce McDonnell’s appointment at a news conference at City Hall on Friday morning. Multiple sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly before the announcement, confirmed that he was the mayor’s choice.
McDonnell was with the LAPD for 28 years, at times serving under Chief William J. Serving as assistant chief under “Bill” Bratton, he served as the public face of the department. After an unsuccessful bid for a second term as sheriff, McDonnell took a job at USC. While she was widely seen as a potential successor to former LAPD Chief Michelle Moore, who left the post earlier this year, McDonnell has kept a lower public profile than other candidates.
McDonnell, who heads the Safe Communities Institute at the USC Price School of Public Policy, was one of three finalists selected by the Citizens Police Commission from a field of more than 25 applicants to lead one of the nation’s largest police departments .
Other finalists also had strong LAPD ties: Deputy Chief Imada Tingirides, who runs the department’s South Bureau, and Robert “Bobby” Arcos, who left the department in 2018 and took a high-ranking position in the LA County District Attorney’s office .
Bass has made clear that she wants the next police chief to focus on improving officer morale as well as removing barriers to recruitment into the LAPD.
A report released last month by Bass drew heavily on complaints from the public about the department’s disciplinary process, its grievance system, high stress, “inadequate” staffing and the level of support provided after “significant incidents” such as firings. There was more focus. By the officials.
“We will use this information not only to find our next police chief but also as guidance as we support our officers and advance reforms that make Los Angeles safer,” Bass said last month. Are.”
During his tenure with the LAPD, McDonnell made a mark by working with the city’s diverse communities and political leaders to restore trust in the department following the Rampart corruption scandal in the late 1990s and early 2000s, where The officers committed robberies and murders.
In 2002, during his first run for the job of chief, McDonnell won praise for offering a blueprint for a more grassroots style of policing that tried to strike a balance between crime-fighting and community relations; This strategy was later adopted by Bratton and served as the basis for broader changes in the organization.
As premier, he faces the difficult task of continuing some of his predecessor’s reforms, including de-escalation and cosmetic traffic stops, while addressing more serious problems. The number of officers in the department is hundreds less than two years ago and recruitment efforts have not been successful so far.
After an increase in incidents at the beginning of the year, most violent crime categories are now at or below the numbers at the same time last year. And yet a series of high-profile incidents, including most recently the alleged hijacking of a city bus that left one person dead, have made the growing lawlessness a constant topic on nightly news broadcasts and social media. .
Police shootings have similarly declined, but the department continues to face criticism that it is not doing enough to reduce officers’ use of force.
LAPD colleagues have described McDonnell as a compassionate, popular leader.
Even though she’s been away from the department for more than a decade, McDonnell brings “extensive experience” to the job, according to Sandy Jo McArthur, a retired LAPD assistant chief who, like McDonnell, went into academia after leaving law enforcement. .
He said the fact that he has already led one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the Sheriff’s Department bodes well for his ability to step into his new position and be effective from day one.
He is now the chief of the LAPD – a job he was handed twice.
The son of working-class immigrants from Ireland, McDonnell grew up in Boston before relocating to Southern California more than four decades ago.
He attended Don Bosco in Boston, where he considered drafting and architecture but realized he could not sit at a desk for the rest of his life. So he headed off to Saint Anselm College near Manchester, N.H.
During his senior year, he got an internship at the Boston Police Department, and he hoped to be hired after graduation. But then came a tax-cut measure that downsized the Boston police force, so McDonnell moved out west.
He joined the LAPD in 1981 at the age of 21 and worked his way up the ranks, holding a variety of assignments in patrol, detective, crime, gangs, organized crime, homicide and other divisions.
For McDonnell, this was long-awaited confirmation.
He had twice previously applied for the job of LAPD chief, but lost to Bratton in 2002 and Charlie Beck in 2009. He was appointed Chief of Police of Long Beach in March 2010.
In 2014, he was elected Los Angeles County Sheriff, succeeding Lee Baca, the longtime sheriff who retired under a cloud of scandals ranging from assaulting jail inmates to hiding a jailhouse informant from the FBI. This included a federal indictment of sheriff’s officials on charges of. , Under Baca’s watch, 18 employees were criminally charged and found that the department had hired employees with criminal histories, including Baca’s own nephew.
A year before winning the election, McDonnell publicly evaluated the race, but ultimately did not enter the race because the work of raising money for a countywide election would have taken him away from his families and his duties in Long Beach. He entered the race following the surprise retirement of embattled former Sheriff Baca.
Some opponents argue that McDonnell was an effective leader, but did not do enough to address the problems encountered during the Baca administration.
At Long Beach, McDonnell led a force that, despite being much smaller than the LAPD, faced similar concerns about staffing shortages. He has been criticized for an increase in officer-involved shootings, as well as the beating of an unarmed man in 2013.
He served one term before being replaced by Alex Villanueva in a surprise election upset for a seat where an incumbent had not been defeated for over a century. He later joined the exodus of high-ranking law enforcement officers moving into academia.
At a USC forum last year about crime on the Metro system, McDonnell talked about the need for a multi-pronged crime response, starting with hiring more police officers and emphasizing stronger penalties while deterring those seeking help. Were connected to the services.
A Loyola Marymount University survey of Los Angeles residents showed greater satisfaction with the overall performance of the LAPD than in recent years, even though a larger portion of the black and Latino population see disparities in the way the department polices them.
Finding the city’s next police chief is one of the most closely watched decisions any mayor will make.
Bass has said that she was surprised by the general reaction she received from rank-and-file officials, who, unlike other recent chief searches, seemed to openly favor an outside chief.
“I was hoping that the officer would be an internal candidate, someone with great depth, and that was not the case,” he said. “I would say the No. 1 concern from the officers’ standpoint is their morale, and I thought that was going to be because of the community perception about law enforcement – that’s true, but what was more important was the low morale because of the internal LAPD. Methodology of.”
During community forums, many attendees stressed the selection of an insider who is prepared to lead policing in a city as large and diverse as L.A. is important to address one of the chief complaints of the next chief of officers. : The idea that the department’s highly discredited disciplinary system has created a double standard for high-ranking officers.
Last month, Bass released a report detailing the results of a month-long survey of civil rights groups, neighborhood council members, LAPD officers and others about what they want in their next chief.
