LAPD Getting Bigger, More Diverse

I heard a story on 89.3 FM KPCC yesterday that the Los Angeles Police Department is on track to make their recruitment goals this year to reach a milestone of 10, 000 active duty police officers by next year and that it currently has 9, 567 officers. I tried googling for about an hour to find a source for the KPCC story (there was nothing on it that I could find at their website) but I found some other interesting stories instead. Did you know that the LAPD is planning on becoming the first police force to accept text messages to 911? That they receive over 2 million calls per year? They want to accept multimedia text messages, but they do not think they will have that capacity for another 3 years. Also, the LAPD is actually pretty diverse: "The breakdown is 12.4% Black, 38% Latino, 40% Caucasian, 6.3% Asian and 1.8% Filipino. 18.6% of the sworn population is Female."

Eventually, I found this Daily News article by Rick Orlov "LAPD speeds toward goal of 10,000-cop department" which was most likely the source of the KPCC report I heard yesterday and thought "I should blog about that!"

Beefing up the LAPD's ranks has been a top priority of Chief William Bratton, who had fewer than 9,000 under his command when he was hired in 2002.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa set the overall hiring goal for the department and pushed through a hike in the garbage-collection fee last year to pay for more officers.

At the time, officials hoped to have 10,000 cops by 2010. Earlier this year, the department hit the 9,400-mark, and officials predicted there would be 10,000 officers by 2009.

Strangely, there's nothing in the Times that I could see on the story. The Daily News also has an article by Rachel Uranga and the indefatigable Rick Orlov reporting that it is very likely that Police Chief William Bratton will receive an official 5-year re-appointment from the Los Angeles Police Commission today. Kevin over at LA Observed calls it "inevitable."

I could think of some other adjectives to use.