Covering Crime and Justice Written and edited by
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Chapter 1
The Crime Beat: LAPD Thumbnail
By Dave Krajicek

Reporter Christine Pelisek produced a detailed thumbnail profile of the Los Angeles Police Department published in a September 2002 edition of LA Weekly.

The piece, a compilation of nearly 400 statistics, was part of a special section devoted to the police department.

Here are highlights from the numbers, which provide a vivid snapshot of the nation's second-largest police department (after New York). Reporters elsewhere could prepare a comparable thumbnail of their own police agency.

  • With a 2000-01 budget of $836 million, the LAPD has 9,022 officers and about 3,100 civilian employees.
  • Eighty-one percent of the officers are men, 19 percent women. Latinos make up 40.5 percent of the total, African-Americans 16.5 percent and Asians 5.4 percent.
  • LAPD recruits (minimum age 21; maximum age 40; average age 27) spend 28 weeks in the police academy. The minimum height requirement is 5 feet. Uniform officers wear a utility belt that weighs 15 pounds when fully loaded with a gun (a 15-shot, 9mm Beretta) and holster, pepper spray, handcuffs, keys, radio and flashlight.
  • The force counted 66 officer-involved shootings in 2001, as well as 11 accidental discharges. Seven citizens were shot dead and 15 wounded by LAPD officers that year. Officers used pepper spray 227.
  • The base, entry-level salary for a police officer – before overtime and any special-duty pay – was $44,537. New officers enjoy 15 vacation days and 13 floating holidays after one year on the job.
  • The annual base salary of a sergeant was $83,912; detective, $78,830; lieutenant, $98,496; captain, $106,633 to $125,881; commander, $139,116; deputy chief, $156,980, and the police chief, $247,338.
  • The LAPD disciplined 1,530 officers in 2001. Nearly 1,000 were suspended an average of 14 days. Police registered 8,655 complaints from citizens or within the department.
  • The LAPD's fleet includes 4,180 patrol cars, 1,376 unmarked vehicles, 359 motorcycles and 17 helicopters. The police department recorded 728 pursuits in 2001, resulting in injuries to 183 citizens or suspects and eight police officers.

The stories can be accessed in the electronic archive of the newspaper at http://www.laweekly.com. The web address for Pelisek's piece is: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/42/cops-pelisek3.php

 

  



© 2003 Criminal Justice Journalists

Created with the cooperation of the Institute for Justice and Journalism, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California,
and the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania

Made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation