Jim McDonnell is a cop.
That’s hardly a shock. He’s, in spite of everything, the latest chief of the Los Angeles Police Divisionone of many nation’s most storied, emulated and criticized legislation enforcement businesses — celebrated by Dragnettorn to items by the beating of Rodney King.
However not all LAPD chiefs are cops at their core. Invoice Bratton, chief from 2002 to 2009, was a political chief, skilled in legislation enforcement however distinguished most by his command of the town’s energy construction. Willie Williams, who presided over the division from 1992 to 1997, was a group organizer in uniform, expert with the general public however much less so with the rank-and-file.
McDonnell is totally different. He got here up by means of the ranks of the division and is aware of its customs and routines, that are no less than as vital for main it as understanding concepts about reform or political relationships. Past that have, he additionally had excursions as chief of the Lengthy Seaside Police Division and Los Angeles County Sheriff. So whereas he’s a creature of the LAPD, he’s additionally a scholar of it.
And he’s a cop. When he talks concerning the division’s priorities, he doesn’t flip instantly to budgets or reforms. He talks about driving down crime, enhancing public security and bettering the general public’s notion of crime. He refers to his officers as “coppers.” And he speaks with a way of historical past and perspective: Los Angeles at present is vastly safer than the town he patrolled as a younger officer — and that I coated as a younger reporter — a reality that’s typically misplaced within the warmth of political campaigns and the shrill calls for for defunding or reorganizing policing.
“Any crime is too much,” he acknowledged in a current interview. “But we’re in a relatively good place.”
McDonnell involves the helm of the LAPD at a second of uncertainty. The town isn’t going through against the law disaster, because it was within the Nineteen Nineties, when murders topped 1,000 per yr and violent crime was rampant. Nor, nonetheless, is that this a interval of quiescence; reasonably, it’s considered one of combined alerts.
Murders dropped in 2024as did most violent crimes. Property crimes, nonetheless, have dipped a bit within the first months of 2025, however they’ve been stubbornly immune to police efforts lately, police information exhibits.
McDonnell should make sense of that difficult image, realizing as he does that property crime has a manner of morphing into violence if left unchecked. That statement, the core of James Q. Wilson’s “Broken Windows” concepthas guided many police departments, together with the LAPD, towards the historic restoration of security to American cities.
However its victories should be gained time and again. There isn’t a complacency in policing.
Whilst McDonnell correctly focuses on crime, he faces the moreover difficult duties of making ready Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics, responding to avenue homelessness, restoring police morale and patrolling neighborhoods devastated by the Pacific Palisades fireplace. Any a type of would signify a tall order for a police chief — all of them without delay will stress the whole division.
Nonetheless, he’s an optimist. The fires, McDonnell mentioned, supplied a crash course in inter-agency cooperation, calling on cops and firefighters to coordinate their work with that of the Division of Water and Energy and others. The town’s Emergency Operations Heart was activated by Mayor Karen Bass within the early hours of the hearth, and the LAPD went on tactical alert — a heightened state of deployment throughout which shifts are held over and holidays cancelled — for a month. It was grueling, McDonnell mentioned, however instructive, too.
“I look at that as valuable,” he mentioned, creating strains of communication and belief which are important to the work on homelessness and that might be helpful in placing collectively safety plans for the World Cup and Olympics, amongst different upcoming occasions. “It really is going to be all about relationships.”
Nothing occurs on the LAPD with out officers keen to hold out the mission, and McDonnell, echoing Bass, highlights morale and recruitment as important to the division’s success.
“Everybody has recruitment issues,” he mentioned, and he’s proper. Ever because the homicide of George Floyd and the nationwide revulsion at that act, it’s been onerous to steer younger folks to hitch police forcesthe place they need to count on to be scrutinized and held to excessive requirements {of professional} conduct.
In some methods, that’s helpful: It culls out the would-be officers who’re drawn to the work for the prospect to hold a gun and boss folks round. Nevertheless it additionally deprives police businesses, together with the LAPD, of high quality candidates who merely aren’t keen to place up with the downsides of the job.
“It really is going to be all about relationships.”
jim mcdonnell, l. a. police chief
McDonnell mentioned he hopes to clarify that the LAPD helps its officers, that younger folks can come to the division to guard and serve, and may depend on the division’s help as long as they do their jobs in good religion. The principle grievance he has heard relating to morale, McDonnell mentioned, is the concern that the LAPD’s disciplinary system is unfair, that it permits frivolous or malicious complaints to linger.
To deal with that, he’s proposing fast evaluations of complaints the place the allegation might be simply checked — towards bodycam video, for instance. If the allegation is extreme power and the digital camera disproves it, then the grievance might be dismissed with out an prolonged assessment and with out having to “bench” the officer.
“We need to be more reasonable,” McDonnell mentioned. The town ought to demand a “high level of accountability … but if you can show that it absolutely did not happen, clear it.”
There’s peril on that path. Going too far to reassure cops that the division will help them can encourage misconduct. The officers who beat King, as an illustration, insisted by means of two prison trials that that they had merely carried out the LAPD’s insurance policies and practices on the usage of power.
However not all slopes are slippery, and it makes good sense to dismiss allegations which are transparently false. If McDonnell can develop a system for spitting these instances out early, it may bolster morale and assist recruitment with out going as far as to undermine accountability.
Combating crime, making ready for the worldwide stage, housing the homeless and rebuilding the town — that’s lots to deal with. McDonnell is aware of it.
Typically, solely a cop will do.
