By comparison, L.A and Santa Monica budget roughly 2.49 officers per thousand residents (not including LA Airport/Port police.) Signal Hill, surrounded by Long Beach, budgets roughly 3.15 sworn officers per thousand residents for its taxpayers. [** July 2020 update: LA's City Council adopted a FY202-21 budget that reduced funding for LAPD that will produce a budgeted level by summer 2021 of roughly 2.43 officers/thousand.]

LB's ratio doesn't include officers that the Council doesn't allocate or pay-for; that number is decided and paid for by various entities that contract with LBPD to provide police services for them at LB's Port, Airport, LBUSD, LBCC, LBTransit, L.A. County Carmelitos housing and Metro. Contracted officers aren't routinely available during their contracted shifts to respond to citywide needs or to calls for service where you live (unless you live inside the Port, the Airport or on a LBTransit bus or a Metro train.) If the number of contracted officers were included, LB's FY19 budgeted police level would be 1.79 officers per thousand.

For details on LB's FY19 citywide deployable budgeted figure, see LBREPORT.com coverage at this link.

In calculating the officer-to-population ratio, LBREPORT.com used the most recent updated population estimate for CA cities provided by the CA Dept.of Finance (May 2019 Report E-1.)

In FY17, LB's Mayor/Council restored 17 citywide deployable officers. In FY18. the Mayor/Council restored no additional citywide deployable officers. For FY19, Mayor Garcia recommended restoring 6 citywide deployable (bicycle patrol) officers while city management proposes shifting one citywide deployable officer to an Airport-contracted position, producing a net increase from FY18 to FY19 of 5 additional routine citywide deployable budgeted officers. The Mayor didn't change his recommended figure for FY20; no Councilmember(s) objected or offered contrary motions.

The net result for LB taxpayers in FY20: 22 citywide deployable officers restored out of 208 erased...with 186 citywide deployable budgeted officers that LB taxpayers previously had not restored (despite the Measure A sales tax increase) in budgets recommended by the Mayor and approved by the City Council.

Mayor Robert Garcia has defended the current pace of officer restorations and in August 2018 balked at fully restoring the 180+ remaining officers he voted as a Councilman (2009-2014) to erase. LBREPORT.com coverage (with audio) here.

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