Contact: Eric Rose (805) 624-0572 or
Paul Haney (626) 755-4759
LOS ANGELES, April 8, 2010 — Drastic cuts to the LAPD civilian workforce are forcing LAPD officers to increasingly fill civilian jobs instead of patrolling the city’s streets and neighborhoods, the president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) said today. These widespread cuts – in combination with forced time off for overtime worked – are resulting in significantly reduced police deployments throughout the city that threaten to create a public safety crisis this summer.
"It is a myth that the LAPD has been exempt from budget cuts due to the city’s financial crisis," said Paul M. Weber. "The impacts are very real, as officers are forced to stay at home because of overtime concerns and fill in for furloughed civilians or vacant civilian jobs. City officials need to carefully consider the impacts of budget cuts and realize the consequences to public safety of any actions that increase police response time and decrease patrols in our city."
At the end of the last fiscal year (June 2009), 3,958 civilian positions were authorized for LAPD. For the current budget year, LAPD civilian positions were reduced to 3,587 – then hundreds more of those authorized positions were eliminated due to budget cuts. Today the Department has less than 3,000 civilian employees. With an additional 60 civilians slated for early retirement by June, the number of LAPD civilian personnel is expected to drop below 2,900 – over 1,000 civilian jobs eliminated.
Weber said civilian personnel perform duties that are crucial to effective law enforcement, such as taking 9-1-1 calls, warrant processing, data entry for suspect booking, grant writing and crime statistics analysis. If civilians aren’t available to fulfill these critical roles, the responsibilities are shifted to sworn officers.
"For every 100 officers who are pulled from field work to backfill vacant civilian positions, it is the equivalent of removing about 30 police cars citywide," he said. "And that has a dramatic impact on our ability to respond to calls for service and keep crime down. On a daily basis we are getting reports from our officers that they are spending increasing amounts of time in the station performing administrative tasks, rather than fighting crime on the streets. The backfilling of civilian duties by sworn officers threatens to reverse the LAPD’s historic crime reductions in recent years.
"The city cannot tolerate any further reductions in the civilian LAPD workforce," concluded Weber. "Many of the positions already cut need to be reinstated on a priority basis."
About the LAPPL Formed in 1923, the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) represents the more than 9,900 dedicated and professional sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPPL serves to advance the interests of LAPD officers through legislative and legal advocacy, political action and education. The LAPPL can be found on the Web at www.LAPD.com NewsLetter from LAPP