At the recent Zoom meeting of the Westside Regional Alliance of Community
Councils (WRAC), Councilman Bonin maintained that the $150,000,000 cut
in the LAPD's 2020-21 budget represented no more than .7% of that budget, i.e., less than one percent.
I have been having trouble understanding how such a minor cut could
result in such drastic personnel loses, for example, reducing the Venice
Beach Detail from 42 to 26 officers, with losses of entire units in many
specialty fields.
I discussed this calculation with a senior LAPD Pacific Division officer and he told
me the cut was closer to 8%.
I just did the math to be sure. The total 2020-21 fiscal year
budget was $1,860,000,000. Divided into $150,000,000, I get .08.
Multiply that by 100 to get percentage, and I get 8%.
So, despite being Harvard-educated, Mr. Bonin does not know how to calculate percentages. And as we have known for years, he does not care about the increasing crime and shootings and murders that have resulted from his negligence.
Addendum: I shared this with Chief Michel Moore and he replied:
More importantly, given the inflationary aspect of collective bargaining wage agreements and their impact on total dollars spent, is the physical reduction in workforce. For FY 2020/21 the sworn workforce is being reduced from 10,000 to 9,751. This is in addition to the 100 officer reduction that occurred in FY 2019/20. The civilian workforce is being reduced from 3,020 (est) to 2,850. The Department has completed a top-to-bottom review of its organization and functions. This has resulted in shifting of remaining personnel resources in the best manner possible for public safety while also identifying activities that will be curtailed, accomplished in an alternate manner, or eliminated. Most concerning is following these cuts, further reductions have been sought by the City Council. These reductions involve additional workforce reductions of 355 sworn and 273 civilian employees. While these reductions have not been formally adopted by the City Council, the Department is currently assembling lay-off lists to meet these additional cuts.
