Los Angeles mayor picks ex-sheriff to be city’s police chief

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former LA County Sheriff Jim McDonnell has been selected to lead the Los Angeles Police Department, taking charge of the force of nearly 9,000 officers as discontent grows among the city’s residents over public safety even as violent crime numbers drop, the mayor announced Friday.

Mayor Karen Bass, who had the final say after a civilian board of Los Angeles police commissioners vetted McDonnell, said her selection of a veteran law enforcement officer was based on a need to reduce crime and make every neighborhood safer. Bass met with hundreds of LAPD officers and community leaders before making her decision.

The Los Angeles City Council still needs to approve the choice.

The pick ended debate over whether Bass would choose an “insider” or “outsider” who would shake things up and challenge the way things were done within the department’s insular culture.

“From the beginning, I have been clear: My top priority as mayor is to ensure that Angelenos and our neighborhoods are safer today than yesterday,” Bass said. “Chief McDonnell is a leader, an innovator, and a change maker, and I am looking forward to working with him to grow and strengthen LAPD.”

The incoming chief will have to make sure the department is ready for the additional security challenges of the 2026 World Cup, 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympics.

McDonnell was elected LA County Sheriff in 2014 to oversee the largest sheriff’s department in the U.S. Before that, he spent 29 years in the LAPD and served as Long Beach’s police chief for almost five years.

McDonnell vowed to enhance public safety, grow back the force that has shrunk from about 10,000 officers in 2019, and “ensure respectful and constitutional policing practices.”

McDonnell, 65, said he was happy to come out of retirement to do the job.

“I feel like I still have gas in the tank, fire in the belly, if you will, and a desire to be able to try and be helpful,” he said.

The appointment follows the surprise retirement of Chief Michel Moore in early 2024. Moore’s tenure was marked by greater scrutiny into excessive force and police killings of civilians in the nation’s second-largest city. Dominic Choi has led the department as interim chief — and the first Asian American chief — since March 2024. Bass thanked Choi for his work, and said he will continue to serve as assistant chief under McDonnell.

Some had hoped Bass, the first Black woman to be elected mayor in 2022, would use the opportunity to make history and fill the post with the first Latino or female chief. The LAPD has had two Black male chiefs in the past. McDonnell is white.

The other two candidates sent to Bass, who made the final selection, were Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides, a Black woman, and former Assistant Chief Robert “Bobby” Arcos, who is Latino. Both were reported by the Los Angeles Times as finalists for the position.

Bass said she has been a champion of inclusion for her whole career.

“I think there’s work that needs to be done in the LAPD,” Bass said. “I will continue to pay attention to representation particularly with the Latino population which we know is half of the city of Los Angeles.”

The LAPD has faced criticism through the years over its response to the George Floyd protests and several high-profile shootings by officers. It has struggled to get rid of bad cops while also struggling to recruit as more officers who leave its ranks than are coming in.

A report released by Bass last month detailing her meetings with hundreds of officers found low morale to be the top issue within the LAPD, caused by concerns over the fairness of the department’s disciplinary process, as well as high stress, “inadequate” staffing and “inconsistent” support provided after critical events like shootings by officers.

Meetings with community groups emphasized the need for police transparency, focused hate crime reporting, and de-escalation as a means to avoid use of force by officers.

McDonnell was ultimately a “safe choice,” said Fernando Rejón, executive director of the Urban Peace Institute who was among those who met with Bass. He hopes that McDonnell embraces nonpunitive approaches to community safety.

Janel Belovette Jenkins, co-executive director of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, believes a new chief does not address the “root issues” of overpolicing.

“The LAPD continues to drain resources from the City’s budget that could be better spent on housing and jobs — the true pillars of public safety,” Jenkins said in a statement.

The police officers’ union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, applauded the mayor’s choice, which confirms her “commitment to improve historic lows in officer staffing and officer morale and to fix LAPD’s broken discipline process,” the organization said in a statement.

The union had endorsed Bass’s opponent, developer Rick Caruso, in the mayoral race.

John Sullivan, who retired as a lieutenant in 2018 after 30 years at the county sheriff’s department, called McDonnell a “hybrid” insider-outsider.

“He grew up in the organization, he knows the organization … but he’s also been the chief of a separate department, and he’s also been sheriff,” Sullivan said.

At the LAPD, McDonnell held every rank from police officer to second-in-command under former LAPD chief Bill Bratton. During that time, he helped implement a federal consent decree imposed on the department largely as a result of the Rampart scandal, a corruption case involving rampant misconduct within the anti-gang unit.

When he was elected county sheriff, he inherited a department in the wake of a jail abuse corruption scandal that led to convictions against his predecessor, Lee Baca, and more than 20 other officials. McDonnell was applauded for embracing federal mandates for jail reform, including improving de-escalation training and better documentation of the use of force that has led to improved jail conditions.

In 2022, he joined the University of Southern California as director of the Safe Communities Institute, which conducts research on public safety solutions.

McDonnell also served on an advisory committee to USC’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies, a U.S. Homeland Security department-funded institution to do research on counterterrorism, according to Sullivan. His experience with studying international security threats could be an asset as police chief.

“We have really large public events that are coming that could well be terrorist targets,” Sullivan said. “The war in Gaza, the brewing war in south Lebanon, all that’s going to have echoes or ripples here in Los Angeles.”