How much would you be willing to pay for a security blanket?

$1?

$100?

$100,000?

If you’re most of the members of the Los Angeles City Council, apparently the answer is about $1 billion.

on Wednesday,

be it

A contract has been approved with the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which will pay higher starting salaries, larger pay raises and heavier retention bonuses to Los Angeles Police Department officers

represented by the union

.

All told, the four-year contract is expected to increase total police spending to $3.6 billion by 2027, up from the current $3.2 billion.

It’s a lot of money, as Councilman Bob Blumenfield said before the 12-3 vote. But it’s worth it, the story goes, because Los Angeles needs more cops.

Mayor Karen Bass has certainly said that repeatedly. In fact, she’s made it a priority to replenish the LAPD’s ever-shrinking ranks, first by pushing through a $13.1 billion budget calling for the addition of about 1,000 officers and now by advocating for the contract with the police union to provide incentives Agents join the department and stay.

I want to thank City Council leaders for supporting this action and look forward to working together to ensure Angelenos are safe, Bass said in a statement following Wednesday’s vote.

Not that it took much convincing for some members.

“We want greater public safety in our communities and on the streets of the world

v

Est

side,” Councilman Traci Park said at the meeting. “This contract is necessary to keep the police officers we have and hire the people we need. And it’s essential to rebuild the department and keep our city safe.”

What is missing in this rush to spend money

another

about $1 billion

more than four years in tax dollars

to “keep our city safe” is that, for the most part, our city is already becoming safer.

Believe it or not, crime is declining by comparison

to with

last year and it’s nowhere near historic highs.

According to LAPD data, homicides are down 24%, while robberies are down 13% in the reporting period ending Aug. 12. Earlier this summer, the department also reported a drop in hate crimes and shooting victims.

It’s not just Los Angeles either.

Nationally, homicides are down about 12% by comparison

to with

last year, according to a recent report that collected crime data for more than 100 U.S. cities. Robberies and burglaries also fell in many cities in the first half of 2023

to with

the same period of 2022.

All this suggests that while police officers play a role in ensuring public safety, their presence is far from the only factor in reducing crime.

Not that you’d know any of that if you watched Wednesday’s chaotic debate between eight Republican presidential candidates, when they wrecked “hollowed” Democrat-run cities for “empowering the police” and were violent, lawless, dystopian hellholes full of fentanyl addicts. Los Angeles even got a shoutout.

You would also not know that this very real national drop in crime has occurred, even as police forces have continued to shrink.

After all, it’s not like Los Angeles is the only city losing officers en masse to retirement and having trouble recruiting replacements. A similar trend is happening in many major cities, including New York and Chicago, as well as several smaller cities closer to home in California.

Councilwoman Nithya Raman made a comment this Wednesday when she questioned whether paying higher salaries and handing out bigger bonuses would really solve the LAPD’s staff shortage. Councilor Hugo Soto-Martnez also asked that.

I think the most honest thing I’ve heard about why I was on these LAPD numbers was from an LAPD officer, he told The Times. That’s what he said to me

N

Nobody wants to be a police officer because we have an image problem. “

Not really getting any answers, Soto-Martnez, Raman and Councilman Eunisses Hernandez all voted against approving the contract with the Los Angeles Police Protective League on Wednesday.

At a press conference prior to meeting Black Lives Matter-LA activists, Hernandez explained why setting aside so much money in the city budget is financially irresponsible.

“Our budget is a zero-sum game,” she said. “If we allocate so much of our city dollars to just one department, we’re starving all our other departments of the money, staff and resources they need to serve Angelenos.”

Soto-Martnez argued on social media that the contract is a duplication of an expensive failed status quo.

Still, it went easily. That’s because, while the cold, hard reality of the data was on the side of councilors (including the increase in the number of people shot by the LAPD this year), the political narrative was not.

There has long been a discrepancy between the facts about

the

crime and what the public thinks about crime. People don’t

feeling

safe. They fear something that is only underlined when a mass shooting occurs at an Orange County biker bar on an otherwise dull weeknight, even though the alleged shooter is a retired cop.

A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that an “overwhelming majority” of adults in the state believe that violence and street crime are “major” or “somewhat” problems in their neighborhood.

And about half of those surveyed believe things have gotten worse in recent years

Pl

Last year, about the same percentage believed that the police are doing a good job of reducing crime.

Data be damned.

So while it remains to be seen whether paying nearly $1 billion in raises and bonuses will lead to an expansion of the LAPD, one thing is clear. The City Council’s decision to at least give it a try is sure to bring in some Angelenos

feeling

safer.

Like a security blanket. A very expensive security blanket.