By Nathaniel Percy
Source Los Angeles Daily News
An eight-month search to find the Los Angeles Police Department’s next police chief came to an end on Friday, Oct. 4, with Mayor Karen Bass announcing that former Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell will fill the role, a crucial appointment in part because the city will host the 2028 Olympics.
McDonnell, who served one term as sheriff from 2014 to 2018, has also headed the Long Beach Police Department and previously worked with LAPD for 28 years, achieving the rank of assistant chief.
“To reduce crime and make Los Angeles safer by growing and strengthening the LAPD, building up community relations and making sure our city is prepared,” Bass said, “I have selected Jim McDonnell as the 59th chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is a leader, an innovator and a change maker and that’s what we need in L.A.”
McDonnell joins current Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna as the two top law enforcement officials in the county, years after they each served as chief of police for Long Beach’s department.
After a failed bid at re-election in 2018, to Alex Villanueva, McDonnell became the director of the Safe Communities Institute at the USC Price School of Public Policy.
He apparently was one of three finalists for LAPD’s new chief submitted to Bass in August by the department’s Board of Police Commissioners. The board made it’s list of recommendations for the mayor on Aug. 21.
“The board has discharged duties as set forth by the City’s Charter … and will be forwarding a recommended list of candidates to the mayor,” Erroll Southers, the board’s president, said at that meeting.
Southers also endorsed McDonnell’s appointment at the USC Price School, at the time saying McDonnell “brings the experience, expertise, relationships and understanding of what progressive law-enforcement leadership and community engagement really mean.”
McDonnell, who has spent his entire career in Los Angeles County, graduated from the Los Angeles Police Academy in 1981 and served as assistant chief under Chief William Bratton. He had applied to be the department’s chief in 2009 after Bratton left for New York City but lost out to Charlie Beck.
While with LAPD, McDonnell specialized in connecting with the city’s diverse communities and prepared a community policing plan ultimately adopted by Bratton.
McDonnell then left for Long Beach after being selected that city’s next chief — a surprise to some as the city had traditionally promoted from within. McDonnell stayed in Long Beach for four years before a successful run for Los Angeles County Sheriff in 2014.
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