LOS ANGELES—City leaders voted Wednesday to slash the Los Angeles Police Department budget by $150 million, reducing the number of officers to a level not seen for more than a decade amid nationwide demands to shift money away from law enforcement agencies.
About two-thirds of the funding was earmarked for police overtime and will be used to provide services and programs for communities of color, including a youth summer jobs program. The City Council’s 12-2 vote will drop the number of officers from 9,988 as of last month to 9,757 by next summer, abandoning a goal of 10,000 officers only reached in 2013.
Other cities around the country also have cut police budgets or are moving to do so, including a move in Minneapolis to disband the city’s force. New York City lawmakers approved an austere budget Wednesday that will cut $1 billion from the NYPD budget and move it to education and social services in the coming year. In California, liberal Berkeley passed a budget Wednesday that cuts $9.2 million from police, while Oakland leaders last week slashed $14.6 million from law enforcement and they are considering steeper reductions.
The Los Angeles vote reduces the LAPD’s nearly $2 billion budget. Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti had earlier proposed increasing it in April to help preserve the staffing level of 10,000 officers.
There was no immediate comment from the LAPD.
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