City of Long Beach cutting back 100+ police officers in face of budget woes

LongBeachReport.com | LBReport.com | A Vegetable Garden Is Not A Substitute For Enough Cops

"One year ago in September 2009, the LB City Council voted 9-0 to cut LB budgeted sworn officers for taxpayers for deployment citywide by 76 sworn positions (59 sworn + 17 recruits from an erased replenishment Academy class). That came after City Manager Pat West proposed, without dissent from Mayor Bob Foster, to cut LB's sworn police level by 88 officers; the Council's response was to cut "only" 76 officers."

"In the next two weeks, the new Council is scheduled to vote on a proposal by City Manager West, advanced without dissent by Mayor Foster, that the City Council cut 27 more sworn officer positions (four civilianized) if city employee unions agree to modify contracts City Hall negotiated with them (that the unions modified last year that City Hall wants modified again by September 15). If the unions don't agree to this, West and Foster propose that the Council cut 49 more sworn officer positions (on top of the 27 they're already proposing to cut). That would leave LB with 76 fewer officers budgeted for taxpayers for citywide deployment in FY11 than in FY10, when the Council slashed 76 officers from FY09's level."

"The Foster/West "best case" would leave LB taxpayer with roughly 100 fewer budgeted officers than last year (76 + 27 = 103) while their worst case ("Plan B") would leave LB with roughly 150 officers (103 + 49 = 152).That would leave Long Beach with a per capita budgeted officer level for citywide deployment roughly equivalent to cutting L.A.P.D's level by roughly 25% (and think closer to 30%). L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa hasn't proposed this. No L.A. Councilmember has proposed this. And LBPD Police Chief Jim McDonnell didn't propose this when he was L.A.'s Assistant Police Chief."

"In Long Beach, it's the culmination of years of evasions, including another of City Hall's famously non-binding (eventually ignored) "plans" that recommended 1,023 officers by FY2000. Taxpayers never received those officers, not in 2000 or at any time subsequent. At one point, the City Council budgeted 1,020 total officers but that included nearly 60 officers who weren't available for citywide neighborhood deployment because they're contracted to handle tasks at the Port/Airport/LBCC/LBUSD, paid by those entities and not by the Council's General Fund."

"At its maximum, LB's neighborhood/citywide police level budgeted by the Council's General Fund barely reached 960, which was thinned by City Hall's failure to provide a replenishment police academy class to replace retiring/exiting officers, then slashed by the Council in Sept. 09 by 76 budgeted sworn officer positions and now thinned further by over two dozen sworn officer positions budgeted on paper left unfilled on the street."

"That is the level from which LB city management and the Mayor have proposed that the Council cut police still further, from 27 to 76 more officers. By our rough reckoning, that would leave LB below 850 officers and headed toward 810. These were the types of police levels that LB City Hall itself acknowledged over a decade and a half ago should be increased...and that was at a time when LB was smaller and gangs were less entrenched."

comment: Long beach proposals to slash it's PO force, if they follow the extreme cutback option, would have LB having an extremely thinned PD force of 850 policing a city of 450,000, a 1-529 ratio of PO to inhabitants. In comparison Los Angeles has a 1-421 ratio of PO to inhabitants. LB is every bit as dangerous as LA, in fact it is a mini-version of LA. We are a hi-crime city with large swathes of impoverished ghettos and a large, sullen, welfare-leeching minority population.
Long beach looks like it will slash it's force like Oakland did, due to public Employee union intransigence in city negotiations. Looks like LB will become a very dangerous unlivable city.