Amid concerns homicide investigations were being delayed due to a tight budget, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Monday he will deploy more officers to perform investigative and emergency functions, but reduce other services that are not considered critical to public safety.
"In the end, the way the public will feel it, there will be some reduced 'nice-to-have' services by the Los Angeles Police Department," Beck said. "Property-damage only traffic accidents don't get investigated. Some of our desks won't be open at night. You may not be able to get police reports in a timely fashion."
The Los Angeles Times reported the department was putting homicide investigations on hold because it can no longer afford to pay its detectives overtime.
According to budget officials, the department is in the red by about $80million with only two and a half months left this fiscal year.
"The reality is I have to deal with this and I don't have another option," Beck said. "I cannot pay these overtime hours so I have to figure out how to reassign what I have to make this work.
"I may have regional desks instead of all the desks at night," he said. "We may have to look at some of the kinds of reports that we take and make them a report that the victim can turn in, rather than the police officer investigating.
"There are lots of ways I can use my resources differently but you have to remember that it always impacts service. My job is to make sure that it impacts service at a level that the public and city can stand without reducing public safety to the extreme."
Despite the city's fiscal crisis, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the department should continue hiring recruits to replace those who leave the department. Hours later, however, the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee voted 3-1 in favor of a hiring freeze for the LAPD.
Villaraigosa is determined to keep department staffing at 9,963 officers.
"We've got to maintain hiring at least to attrition so we don't undermine even further the number of officers we have on the street," the mayor said. "Look, anybody who's seen the recent increase in homicides over the last few weeks knows that keeping crime down is always the first responsibility of a city, the mayor and the City Council."
Villaraigosa estimated the cost of hiring to attrition will cost $7 million in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
"Chief Beck is prepared to make cuts in the department to offset the cost of hiring to attrition and that will be our first priority," Villaraigosa said. "If there is money in the budget to to do more to address the issue of cash overtime, I'm certainly willing to do that, but both Chief Beck and I believe that the first priority has to be to keep hiring to attrition."
Councilman Bernard Parks, a former police chief who now chairs the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee, said he believes the only way the department can hire new officers is to lay off more civilian employees.
"If you move forward and talk about hiring people and adding to the pension, it's going to grow the structural deficit," Parks said. "The only way that you can do that - regardless of the cost - is you're going to have to lay off more civilian employees, and you're going to cut other services.
"There's nothing magical about 9,963," Parks added. "The issue is you have to deploy them to the benefit of the community. If your goal is to continue cutting civilian services and continue cutting civilian positions, then you can keep hiring, but at some point, do you hit a point of no return?"
During the committee meeting Monday, Parks and fellow councilmen Jose Huizar and Paul Koretz voted to recommend to the full City Council the LAPD stop hiring. Councilman Bill Rosendahl dissented.
Parks suggested negotiating with the police union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, to reduce overtime costs by stretching out homicide detectives' schedules so they work five days a week instead of just three or four.
"It gives them one more day to work at the same cost to the city, and they would get 30 percent more deployed cars or shifts out of making that change," he said.
Beck said because the department is giving time off in lieu of overtime pay, it has the equivalent of about 292 fewer officers on duty. By summer, that number will grow to about 600, he said.
