L.A. City must reduce spending to close its staggering $1 billion budget deficit, but where should the cuts be made?
As the budget committee continues the painstaking cost-cutting expedition, holding hearings to examine more than 300 individual items, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez believes there is potential to save $18 million in one move.
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"I'd like to move not to fund the request for two additional (LAPD) helicopters until this special study I requested is completed with the UCLA Carceral Ecologies Lab," Hernandez said during Thursday's meeting.
She claims the evidence suggesting a need for the airships in Los Angeles is based on what she describes as an outdated study done in 1971.
Hernandez wants to hold off releasing the funds until the new study is completed so that "The council can carefully consider the implications of this program with current information, with data that is of this current generation and century."
She used the city of New York as a point of reference, but LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell says there is no comparison.
"In comparing us to New York, they have about 4 times the police officers we do for about half the geography," Chief McDonnell said at the meeting. "So to compare us with them is apples and oranges."
"The way [NY} city is built with the skyscrapers, it doesn't lend itself to the use of helicopters the way Los Angeles does, which is spread out over 465 square miles," he argued.
McDonnell added that for his department to be as effective without the helicopters, they would need "a whole lot more police officers on the ground....So whether the study is dated, the concepts are still the same."
After much debate, the decision to purchase or not purchase the two new choppers for LAPD must be made by L.A.'s full 15-member council.
So, for now, that $18 million is unallocated.
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