“911, what’s your emergency?”
For the Los Angeles Police Department, it’s the endless cycle of homelessness and a mental health crisis that has plagued the city.
Roughly “one-third” of calls to the LAPD — or 40 calls an hour — are now for people suffering from a mental health crisis, Chief Jim McDonnell told The California Post.
“We spend an awful lot of our patrol time dealing with people with mental health issues,” he said, adding that at the end of the day, the police are the ones called when somebody is threatening someone.
That means other issues could fall on the back burner.
“Things will get pushed aside,” an LAPD source told The Post. “We listen to the community and many are sharing with us that they are concerned with these [homeless] encampments, so we have to be responsive to the community’s needs.”
There are roughly 72,000 homeless people in LA County, according to 2025 data from the LA Homeless Services Authority — and about 3,400 are on Skid Row.
Additional officers are ‘desperately needed’
The chief, who was appointed in 2024, told The Post his department of 8,700 is increasingly stretched thin and operates with about half the officers per capita compared to the smaller city of Chicago.
He said the magic number of officers to adequately police the city is 12,000.
“I think we can police this city on a smaller per capita basis than Chicago or New York does, but I still think we need substantially more than 10,000 to do it the right way,” McDonnell said.
In January, the City Council approved a plan to hire up to 410 sworn-in officers for 2026, a far cry from 12,000, but something McDonnell said is “desperately needed.”
“It still puts us at a deficit for the year. We’re going to lose 550 to 600 people [to retirement]. So, two years out from the Olympics, five months out from the [FIFA] World Cup, that puts us in a challenging spot,” McDonnell said.
The council’s plan also directs city officials to identify funding solutions for hiring additional officers in future years as part of the upcoming budget process.
“This vote keeps hiring moving this year and sets clear expectations for next year,” Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky said in a statement. “If we add officers above the adopted plan, those costs have to be paid for responsibly, with real offsets or new revenue, and without civilian layoffs or cuts to core city services.”
Despite being short-staffed, McDonnell underscored that the police department has been able to deliver on its core missions of crime suppression, crime control and crime prevention.
“We were down in every crime category and in homicide we were down to 230, which takes us back to 1966 numbers,” he told The Post. “So, we’re very proud of the work that our folks are doing, the challenges that they’ve overcome.”
But the public perception of LA hasn’t changed.
“I hear people saying I haven’t seen LA this unsafe in a long time, and that really doesn’t correlate with our experience,” McDonnell told The Post.
The reason? Areas like Skid Row and MacArthur Park that are lined with trash, mentally ill people and addicts doing drugs in public — compounded by the limited space in the city’s jails.
An LAPD source described the situation as “turnstile justice,” with criminals arrested and released right back out on the street with no accountability.
“If you’re not seeing traction and accountability, you’re going to move on to other areas where you feel like you can make a difference,” the source said.
Capacity issues in LA’s jails
McDonnell said there is no capacity in the jail system, resulting in more criminals being cited out.
“You can imagine that misdemeanors don’t get much in the way of attention as far as incarceration,” McDonnell said.
LA went from 18,000 prison beds in 2019 to 12,400, with the potential of losing another 5,000 beds if Men’s Central Jail closes.
The LA County Board of Supervisors initially voted to close MCJ back in 2021 over concerns about the facilities conditions and treatment of inmates, including numerous deaths, as well as easing the burden of budget shortfalls.
https://nypost.com/2026/02/12/us-news/lapd-responds-to-40-calls-an-hour-for-the-homeless/
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