In the race to become L.A.’s next mayor, the city’s top cop — LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell — has become a lightning rod for debate.
The two candidates — incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman — have staked out differing positions about how the Los Angeles Police Department has performed under McDonnell.
Raman has vowed to replace McDonnell, saying he has not “met the moment” given the department’s response to federal immigration raids. Bass has publicly backed the chief she hired two years ago, saying the LAPD could be thrown into disarray if McDonnell is removed before the 2028 Olympic Games.
Raman’s potential ouster of McDonnell and desire to push reforms on the LAPD has pitted her against the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the powerful union for rank-and-file officers that campaigned against Bass during her first election but is now backing her. The union has poured millions of dollars into attack ads against Raman, who has said she declined contributions from the organization in the past.
In an op-ed published in the Protective League’s monthly magazine earlier this year, union president Richard Mendoza called the Democratic Socialists of America, which has endorsed Raman, an “imminent threat to our members.”
Last week, Raman faced criticism for an Instagram video in which she appeared to slam McDonnell and the mayor, saying at one point “only you can stop fascist liars.” She later denied that she was referring to Bass or McDonnell, saying her remarks were improperly edited — and that she had the video pulled.
The Raman campaign did not respond to numerous requests for an interview about her vision for the LAPD.
Raman, a Harvard-educated urban planner, has sought to burnish her credentials as a political outsider by publicly calling for a change in LAPD leadership — but she hasn’t given a clear timeline on when she would replace McDonnell.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell greets Mayor Karen Bass during a ceremony at police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles on May 27.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Last week, Raman told ABC7 she expected to replace McDonnell in 2030, after he has finished his first five-year term. Hours later, she pulled back a bit, issuing a statement saying she expects to replace him prior to the end of his term, which concludes in late 2029.
“Chief McDonnell is Mayor Bass’s police chief,” her statement said. “I have made it clear that I would seek a chief who can keep Angelenos safe and restore trust with our immigrant communities.”
Her comments at a mayoral debate this week threw further uncertainty about who will run the LAPD if she gets the top job.
Raman sidestepped a question about whether she would replace McDonnell before the Olympics.
“I believe he’s lost the trust of Angelenos, especially in light of the ICE raids,” she said, adding that she wasn’t sure that she could make a “unilateral decision” to fire McDonnell outright. Bass pounced on the comment, saying that the fact that Raman didn’t know the mayor has that authority to get rid of a police chief shows she is unfit for the office.
The LAPD didn’t immediately respond to a request Thursday for an interview with McDonnell.
Asked about Raman’s remarks during his regular appearance on Fox 11 Los Angeles on Wednesday, McDonnell said he found it “problematic” to hear criticism of the LAPD’s response to civil unrest from someone “who wasn’t there.”
He defended the department’s protest response, saying his officers acted appropriately when confronted by unruly demonstrators hurling bottles, bricks, Molotov cocktails and commercial-grade fireworks. Fifty-two officers suffered injuries, ranging from concussions to hearing loss, he said. Such “riotous situations” necessitated the use of tear gas against crowds, he said, something the department hadn’t done in decades.
“It was getting to a point where it could become a deadly force situation, which we were trying to avoid at all costs,” he said. “I don’t think it could’ve been done differently that could’ve had a better outcome.”
City Councilmember Nithya Raman speaks during a debate with incumbent Mayor Karen Bass on Oct. 13.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Conventional wisdom holds that new mayors will eventually select their own chief, a decision that is considered as important as any in defining a city leader’s legacy. Some have waited longer than others to do it. Bass, for instance, oversaw the reappointment of McDonnell’s predecessor, Michel Moore, shortly after her election and stood by him for a year before Moore’s abrupt resignation in early 2024.
Mayors in other big cities have faced similar dilemmas.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist whom Raman is sometimes compared to, recently announced that he intends to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, in a move that was decried by his progressive base. Mamdani told local media that he believed that Tisch was right for the job, based on a proven track record of rooting out corruption and had overseen a crime drop as commissioner, which is the equivalent of a police chief in L.A.
Bass selected McDonnell to lead the LAPD in November 2024 after a lengthy nationwide search.
His appointment was viewed with surprise in local political circles, where some questioned why a progressive mayor like Bass, with a background in community organizing, would hitch her fortunes to a law-and-order chief. Others argued that McDonnell was an appealing choice: An LAPD veteran who offered experience and respect after serving as the chief in Long Beach and later as L.A. County sheriff.
After numerous scandals under Moore, McDonnell was seen as offering stability while the city prepared for the massive security challenges of the World Cup and Olympic Games. In McDonnell, his supporters say, the mayor has an honest and principled leader who has managed to steady a department beset by low morale, dwindling staffing levels and aging facilities. Violent crime has fallen to historic lows under his watch, as it has it many other U.S. cities.
McDonnell, however, has faced withering scrutiny over a dramatic rise in police shootings last year and for the department’s use of hard foam projectiles, tear gas, horse-mounted officers and other tactics against protesters. Within the LAPD, some have also criticized McDonnell for taking a detached approach to running the department and ceding control to underlings, such as Assistant Chief Dominic Choi.
During Tuesday’s debate, Raman suggested that under McDonnell the LAPD has drifted back to being a more opaque, closed-off agency that no longer publishes basic information such as neighborhood-level crime statistics.
In a recent interview with The Times, Bass signaled her frustration with the slow pace of change within the LAPD.
Without singling out McDonnell by name, Bass said she was concerned about the lack of progress on revamping LAPD’s much-maligned disciplinary system, which the chief oversees and which — depending on who you ask — either punishes officers too harshly or fails to hold them accountable.
Bass said that when she toured police station houses after being elected, the number one complaint she heard was about the perception that lower-ranking officers are punished more severely than command staff.
“They feel that command gets away with a lot of things that the rank and file does not,” she said. “So I feel like the reform of the disciplinary system has not gone fast enough, and I am concerned about that.”
Bass has also vowed to make a priority of addressing police shootings of civilians, particularly those involving people experiencing mental health crises. Last month, she signed an executive directive calling for an outside review of the LAPD’s policies and training, which she referred to as “woefully inadequate.”
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell speaks at a news conference at the Hall of Justice on Aug. 6.
(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)
If McDonnell has any doubts about his future, he hasn’t hinted at them during recent public appearances, often talking about the department’s role in the Olympics.
Bass told The Times that a push to replace McDonnell right before the 2028 Olympic Games would leave the LAPD with a leadership vacuum just as its leaders are supposed to be focused on security plans for that event. The last time city leaders recruited a new chief, the search process was nationwide, lasting more than 10 months, she said.
“I think that [Raman] is naive on what it means to do that,” Bass said. “I think she’s naive, and not understanding the instability to the department when leadership is in flux. And so if it took her the same amount of time, that means we’d have a new police chief about seven to eight months before one of the most high-profile security events in U.S. history.”
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell with his wife Kathy, right, is introduced as the 59th chief of the Los Angeles Police Department with Dr. Erroll Southers, then the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, left, and Mayor Karen Bass on Nov. 14, 2024.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
In some ways, Raman and Bass are not as far apart on public safety as they previously were. Both candidates have been critical of the license plate reader company Flock Safety, advocated for investing in alternatives to policing and have recently indicated that they are committed to keeping the LAPD from shrinking any further. And since launching her mayoral bid, Raman’s campaign has publicly distanced itself from the “defund the police” movement that Bass has consistently rebuffed.
Where the two candidates diverge most sharply was over a package of police raises negotiated by Bass in 2023 that Raman said has deepened the city’s financial problems. Sold as a way to boost recruitment, the pay increases are among the reasons the police union has endorsed Bass’ reelection. The next mayor will be asked to negotiate a new police contract, which is set to expire next year.
Matt Klink, an L.A.-based Republican political consultant, said that law enforcement groups, such as the Protective League, were skeptical of Bass when she first took office but now back her because she has “shown through her first term in office that she has consistently supported the police.” He said that Raman, on the other hand, has played to the far left by villainizing McDonnell and downplaying concerns about safety.
“Mayor Bass has a stronger record of supporting the police,” he said. “She backed our contracts and our budgets — she has generally supported public safety.”
UCLA professor David Turner said despite his wariness of Bass’ centrist drift, he and other progressives are equally skeptical of Raman, who, has repeatedly voted to increase the LAPD budget without any meaningful efforts to rein in police misconduct.
“That money was proposed by Mayor Bass and voted and approved by Councilmember Nithya Raman,” said Turner, who runs Million Dollar Hoods, which seeks to map the impact of mass incarceration. Still, he said, he hopes that Raman’s tough talk about McDonnell will translate into more accountability for the LAPD.
“What I’m looking for and what L.A. progressives are looking for is a certain level of boldness and a willingness not to capitulate to the [Protective League] and their whims,” he said.
Times staff writers David Zahniser and James Queally contributed to this report.