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By Sarah Roebuck
Police1
LOS ANGELES — After the Los Angeles Police Department announced a bump in starting salaries for officers, the department has seen a flood of new applicants.
In August, the department said 1,048 people applied, the largest amount of applications in a single month since September 2020, NBC Los Angeles reports.
Up until that point, the LAPD had seen around 840 applications each month.
At the end of August, the Los Angeles City Council voted 12-3 to ratify a contract with the city’s police officers to bump starting pay nearly 13%, putting the salary for a new officer at $86,192. Officers will also see an annual base raise of 3%. Taken together with additional bonuses, officers covered by the contract will get a 4% to 6% wage increase each year for four years.
The LAPD stated that it is performing additional screenings and examinations to manage the growing volume of applications. It also mentioned that it is making efforts to shorten the period to under three months from the time of application to the start of academy training.
Chief Michel Moore reported that an additional 52 officers have either retired, resigned or moved to different agencies in the past few weeks. This has resulted in a current staffing level of 8,959, marking one of the lowest points in over a decade. Mayor Karen Bass has set a goal to increase the number of sworn officers in the department to about 9,500 by June 2024.
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