Shrinking

When she ran for mayor four years ago, Karen Bass said she wanted to regrow the Los Angeles Police Department to the 9,500-officer force it was before the ranks began to shrink. Now up for reelection — and facing a budget crunch — Bass says her plan has shifted.

The aim going forward, she told The Times in a recent interview, is to simply stop the department from getting smaller.

As of this week, the department had 8,677 sworn personnel — the lowest total in nearly a quarter-century. Even after efforts under Bass to streamline hiring and boost recruitment, some officials are concerned there won’t be enough new cops to replace those projected to leave or retire in the coming years.

“My goal changed, unfortunately,” Bass said. “I do hope that one day we get to the expansion, but we are not there now.”

A Bass spokesperson said after the interview that the mayor remains committed to reaching the 9,500-officer benchmark in the long run, but did not provide a timeline for getting there.

On April 20, Bass will release her spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts on July 1. She and the City Council will spend the coming months working out how to balance the city’s books in a way that avoids deep cuts to other services and the layoffs of city employees. A projection by the city administrative officer estimates the city’s budget deficit to be “several hundred million.”

Bass said she had spent years addressing a years-old administrative bottleneck within the city’s personnel department, which runs the background process for police hires.

The efforts were targeted “at every level: at the top, as well as internal to the department,” said Bass. “At least the impediments that kept us from retaining recruits, to get them in the academy, that has changed.”

The mayor called the old hiring process “archaic,” and said similar issues exist with other city departments. At the LAPD, she said, “We expanded recruitment and had a record number of recruits, and then we couldn’t get them hired, so we had to revamp the hiring process.”

Despite attrition at the LAPD in recent years, crime has plummeted, with homicides in the city falling to levels not seen since the 1950s. Yet public safety remains an issue in the mayor’s race, where Bass faces a challenge from City Councilmember Nithya Raman.

A recent survey co-sponsored by The Times found that more than half of voters view Bass unfavorably in the race. The same poll found that 39% of Angelenos think the LAPD needs to increase in size, with 29% saying the department should stay the same size and 19% saying it should shrink.

Raman came out ahead of Bass in a recent poll that only identified candidates in the mayoral race by their platforms, but not their names, though other surveys that identified them by name showed Bass in the lead.

Raman has said that she believes the police force is the right size at around 8,700 officers. Bass’ onetime ally has argued the mayor has thrown too much money at the LAPD, an approach Raman claims has come at the expense of other basic services such as park maintenance and street paving.

Raman has accused the mayor of signing off on raises for police officers with a contract that has done little to make a dent in the department’s recruitment struggles and only made worse the city’s financial picture. She and other critics say that with the dwindling number of cops, officials need to start investing more in community-led efforts that prioritize prevention over punishment in order to further reduce crime.

Bass said she had embraced a crime-fighting strategy that balances traditional policing with a more public health-oriented approach, pointing out that she had opened an Office of Community Safety to support gang interventionists who help defuse neighborhood conflicts before they explode into violence. Her administration also spearheaded sending mental health teams or other unarmed responders to emergency calls that were once fielded by police.

It’s no accident, she said, that killings in some of the most crime-impacted neighborhoods had fallen by 27%. So far this year, police say that most crime categories are down compared to where they were at this point in 2025.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell has said that without addressing police staffing the city’s progress on crime is at risk, especially as L.A. gets set to host large-scale sporting events like the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.

During his briefing to the Police Commission on Tuesday, McDonnell said roughly 8% of the department’s employees are unavailable to work because they are on sick leave or other work restrictions. McDonnell and other police officials have said staffing shortages are limiting the department’s ability to respond quickly to low-level crimes, leading to high officer burnout rates, and driving up overtime expenses.

Asked to assess McDonnell’s first year-and-half as the city’s top lawman, Bass issued a written statement that said she considered McDonnell a strong partner “lowering crime, hiring more officers, and reversing longstanding trends.”

She added: “I will always keep pushing every City leader to do better by the people of Los Angeles.”

Bass said she would continue working with the chief to “identify measures” to reduce the number of police shootings, particularly those involving people in crisis.

Such changes would go hand in hand with an overhaul of the department’s much-maligned disciplinary system, which has faced criticism from some corners for not meting out harsh enough punishments when officers shoot unarmed people. The union that represents the department’s rank-and-file members has long complained of a double standard that lets well-connected officers and senior leaders off the hook.

Bass said that based on her conversations with officers, “the internal part of the disciplinary system has gotten a little better.”

Broader reforms have also been under discussion, with the council weighing new limits on so-called police pretextual stops, in which officers use a minor violation as justification to pull someone over and then investigate whether a more serious crime has occurred. Bass said she is in favor of further changes to tighten LAPD policies.

A recently published report by Catalyst California, a group that advocates for racial justice, found that such stops have continued to disproportionately affect Black and Latino drivers, even as the LAPD has scaled back their use over the past decade.

“Certainly, when I was younger, I experienced pretextual stops, and they are terrifying,” Bass said, adding that she believed the department’s culture was already changing. “I will tell you that as many roll calls as I’ve been to, a lot of officers already feel like they can’t do pretextual [stops] anymore — so I think there’s been progress there, but clearly more, more to go.”

Times staff writers David Zahniser and Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.

A crucial 50-mile airspace route through Azerbaijan has become vital for European travellers as Middle East airspace restrictions impact millions of passengers

The flight corridor that dictates whether vast numbers of passengers can reach their destination is getting narrower.

32,432. That’s the number of Middle East flights that have been scrapped since Israel and the US began bombing Iran at the end of February. The tally of affected passengers now runs well into the millions.

Whilst the daily cancellation figure has now dropped considerably to 11% per day, according to analytics firm Cirium, the knock-on effects of the disruption are still being experienced and will continue for some time.

One way the conflict has and will continue to affect travel is by constricting flight corridors. Now, many European holidaymakers are dependent on a roughly 50-mile route spanning three countries.

The flight corridor over Azerbaijan is one that numerous commercial aircraft have been using to travel from Europe to Asia since early March, when the country closed portions of its airspace following drone strikes the Azerbaijani authorities claim had been launched from Iranian territory, reports the Express.

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Prior to the Iran war, the Azerbaijan path was 100 miles wide at its narrowest points, owing to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the north. It is now 50 miles wide, with airspace to the south closed off by the Azerbaijan authorities.

Almost three weeks into the Iran war, this route through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey is one of just two available for a majority of long-haul flights between Europe and Asia. The alternative route passes through Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The shortage of accessible airspace is fuelling rivalry amongst airlines competing for routes. It is also rendering air travel more costly and environmentally harmful.

Prior to 2022, flights linking much of Europe and Asia travelled over Russia, via the “Siberian Corridor.” That was regarded as one of the most direct ways to connect the two continents.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western airlines were denied access to the airspace. Now a flight from northern Europe, which would have passed directly over Russia, must take a lengthier route either over the North Pole or around the Black Sea. This can tack on roughly three hours to a nine-hour journey, consuming thousands of pounds more jet fuel and emitting dozens of tonnes more CO2e into the atmosphere.

The alternative route from Europe to Asia that is presently available takes passengers south, via Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Whilst it is returning to capacity following weeks of disruptions and cancellations, the escalating conflict in Iran means its viability in the long or medium term remains uncertain.

Dubai International Airport is typically one of the globe’s busiest travel hubs, averaging approximately 1,200 departures and landings daily. It, like numerous airports in the region, is still functioning considerably below its standard capacity. This is partly due to the aerial battles taking place overhead. On Friday, the UAE government reported that it had intercepted 338 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles, and 1,740 drones since February 28, Forbes reports. Despite these efforts, at least eight people have been killed in the UAE, and over 150 have been injured.

Ian Petchenik, the communications director for the flight-tracking site FlightRadar24, fears that the narrowing of flight corridors and the uncertain status of major travel hubs is driving up the cost of plane tickets. He told the New York Times: “At some point, we get to the point where airlines have to make the decision: Is this route still economically viable? Is this a route that we can continue to operate long term within these parameters?”

Mr. Petchenik characterises the flight corridor above Azerbaijan as “a very narrow strip of land.”

To increase the number of planes that can fly on a restricted flight corridor, air traffic controllers instruct aircraft to fly at varying altitudes – effectively spreading them out.

However, according to Graham Wild, a senior lecturer of aviation science and technology at the University of New South Wales in Australia, this can trigger other problems. Planes flying at lower altitudes are more vulnerable to weather and turbulence and also consume more fuel, as the air is denser. Extended flight times and the potential for diversions also present staffing challenges for pilots and flight crews.