• Aug. 2012: Mayor Bob Foster recommends a city management proposed FY13 budget that would entirely eliminate LBPD's field anti-gang comprised of 20 officers + 2 sergeants.

• Aug. 2012: The Council's Public Safety Committee, chaired by Vice Mayor Robert Garcia (chosen by Mayor Foster) holds no meetings to address the public safety impacts (police or fire) of Mayor Foster's recommended FY13 budget.

• Aug. 2012: The Council's Budget Oversight Committee (chair DeLong) recommends (on motion by DeLong and Lowenthal) a roughly $1 million increase to the PD budget sum recommended by Mayor Foster.

• Sept. 2012: Councilman Patrick O'Donnell makes a Council floor motion, approved without dissent, to budget a roughly $1 million more beyond what the Budget Oversight Committee recommended, to give the Chief discretion to fund up to half of the former anti-gang field unit (10 officers plus one sergeant) for one year using "one time" money.

• Aug. 2013: Mayor Foster recommends what he said would be his final budget (of which he said he is "most proud") for FY14. It includes no sums to replace the expiring "one time funds" approved by the Council in Sept. 2012 that kept up to half of the field anti-gang unit afloat.

• Aug. 2013: The Council's Budget Oversight Committee learns through chair DeLong's questioning that LBPD's field anti-gang unit has shrunk to only roughly 7 sworn officers through exits/attrition.

• Aug. 2013: The Council's Public Safety Committee, chaired Vice Mayor Garcia, holds no meetings to address the public safety impacts (police or fire) of Mayor Foster's recommended FY14 budget.

• September 2013: A few taxpayers take the time and effort to speak at Council budget hearings urging restoration of LBPD's field anti-gang unit. They include veteran NLB community advocate Laurie Angel. To hear Ms. Angel's words, click here. No LB business or neighborhood group publicly calls for restoring the anti-gang field unit. The Council enacts a FY14 budget without structural budgeted funding to restore LBPD's anti-gang field unit.

• Feb. 2014: Mayor Foster endorses Vice Mayor Garcia for Mayor. The Long Beach Police Officers Ass'n PAC ultimately endorses Garcia for Mayor, as well as Council candidates Gonzalez, Price, Uranga and Richardson.

• May 2014: LBREPORT.com learns and reports that LBPD management has managed to staff a skeleton field anti-gang unit by drawing personnel from budgeted positions in LBPD's Patrol Calls for Service divisions. Since the Gang assignment created vacancies in the Patrol Divisions, LBPD management backfilled the vacant Patrol positions by using overtime funded by the City Council.

• July 2014: Exiting Mayor Foster recommends a FY15 with no funding for a field anti-gang unit.

• July 2014: Entering Mayor Garcia recommends a FY15 budget with no funding for a field anti-gang unit.

• August 2014: The Council's Public Safety Committee (now chaired by Councilwoman Price) holds no meetings on the Foster/Garcia recommended FY15 budget's public safety impacts and doesn't address restoring LBPD's anti-gang field unit.

• Sept. 2014: The Council adopts a FY15 budget without structural funding for an LBPD field anti-gang unit.

Decimating LBPD's field anti-gang unit is part of a bigger public safety picture.

Since Sept. 2009, City Council voted budget actions (with dissent in Sept. 2011 by now-exited Schipske, Gabelich and Neal) have left Long Beach taxpayers with roughly 200 fewer officers (out of less than 1,000 deployable citywide at its budgeted height.)

• Early July 2014: Exiting Mayor Foster recommends a FY15 budget (after saying a year earlier that the FY14 budget would be his last.) The Foster recommended budget doesn't propose to restore any budgeted police officers or firefighter resources for taxpayers.

• Late July 2014: Entering Mayor Garcia recommends a FY15 budget that, like Foster, doesn't propose to restore any budgeted police officers or firefighter resources for taxpayers.

• August 2014: Councilwoman Price (named by Mayor Garcia to chair the Public Safety Committee, along with Councilmembers Austin and Mungo) doesn't agendize meetings of her committee to discuss public safety impacts of the Garcia/Foster recommended budget and the Public Safety Committee offers no budget recommendations on public safety matters. This is effectively the same policy pursued by the Public Safety Committee when chaired by Vice Mayor Garcia under Mayor Foster.

• Aug. 2014: The Council's Budget Oversight Committee (chair Lowenthal + O'Donnell and Mungo) doesn't recommend restoring police officers or firefighting resources. It "receives and files" (takes no action on) a petition signed by over 20 neighborhood groups that urges the committee to recommend restoring two parks and rec park rangers (after previous Councils cut over a dozen over several years.) [LBREPORT.com detailed coverage on the park ranger issue, click here.]

• September 2 and 9, 2014: The City Council approves a FY15 budget that adds -- on a successful floor motion pursued by Councilwoman Price -- $300,000 for LBPD to address increased residential burglaries. The budget leaves Long Beach with a budgeted sworn police level available for citywide deployment roughly equivalent per capita to cutting roughly 30% of LAPD's officers and with three fire stations without fire stations capable of spraying water to put out fires. Mayors Bob Foster and Robert Garcia recommended this, and Councilmembers Lena Gonzalez, Suja Lowenthal, Suzie Price, Patrick O'Donnell, Stacy Mungo, Dee Andrews, Roberto Uranga, Al Austin and Rex Richardson voted for it.
  
  July 15, 2014 "Inaugural" @ Terrace Theaater

The Council FY15 budget vote (Sept. 2 and 9, 2014) did the following:

• Leaves Long Beach with a budgeted sworn police level available for citywide deployment (not fattened by counting contracted officers restricted to/paid by the Port, Airport, LBCC, LBUSD, LBTransit) roughly equivalent per capita to cutting roughly 30% of L.A.P.D.'s budgeted officers

• Continues to fund an LBPD gang unit with roughly twenty officers to handle various gang-related matters, investigations and the like. This unit was never touched and continues to operate

• Eliminates LBPD's field anti-gang unit. As recently as summer 2012, Councils budgeted this unit which allowed 22 knowledgeable, experienced anti-gang officers to operate on the street in a unit-coordinated manner, acquiring information, gathering intelligence, evaluating conditions and developing contacts. This police resource is now gone.

The City Council can revisit nearly all of its adopted budget actions at any time. Such a budget revision would require a properly agendized item by one (or more) Councilmember(s) which receives the approval of five Council members. (A Mayoral veto, if any, can be overridden by six Council votes.)