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The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved Jim McDonnell as the city’s 59th police chief by an 11-2 vote, and he was then formally sworn in in front of a packed room of city leaders.
Several City Council members praised Mayor Karen Bass for choosing a respected and experienced law officer to lead the department, but the lack of unanimous approval meant that President-elect Donald Trump It highlighted lingering concerns about Mr McDonnell’s record on immigration as he returns to office.
McDonnell, who has made few public appearances since taking office, made his strongest comments yet on ensuring the department would not participate in federal immigration enforcement.
“The LAPD will not cooperate with mass deportations. Los Angeles is a city of immigrants, and we know that immigrants are treated with contempt right now,” McDonnell told Congress, asking the same question at an earlier committee hearing. He spoke in a more determined tone than when he answered some of the questions. “My job is to protect everyone in Los Angeles and build trust, and that’s my plan.”
After the new chief’s personal swearing-in, Bass said he was “very grateful for everything he has done.”
“He listened to everything the people said, and to me, that really epitomizes the type of chief he would be,” she said. A public swearing-in ceremony is scheduled to be held next week.
City Council members Unis Hernandez and Hugo Sotomartinez voted against McDonnell, while Kevin de Leon and Heather Hutt were absent.
“We’re very clear what our policy is,” McDonnell said in response to a question about how he would ensure that all employees under his command follow the department’s immigration rules. .
“Accountability is fundamentally the basis of trust, and we are accountable to the rule of law and to the policies of this organization,” he said.
When asked about a hypothetical scenario in which an LAPD officer detained someone in the back of a patrol car and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents requested extradition, McDonnell said the officer would respond. I said no.
Most of the opposition focused on McDonnell’s past stance on giving immigration authorities access to the nation’s largest prison when he served as Los Angeles County Sheriff from 2014 to 2018. There is. Critics say it allowed inmates to be subject to deportation by federal agents. “Thousands of families” were forcibly separated.
Mr. McDonnell said he has grown in the 10 years since his time as sheriff, but argued that record has been misconstrued. He pointed to statistics showing the number of inmates released to immigration authorities fell from more than 7,800 in 2013, the year before he was elected, to 820 in his final year in office. The number of department-sponsored U visas, which provide protection to immigrant victims of crime, also increased during his term.
The City Council’s split vote on the Los Angeles Police Department chief was unusual. Mr. McDonnell’s immediate predecessors, Michelle Moore and Charlie Beck, were each approved unanimously.
In an interview before the vote, Mr. Sotomartinez said he would stick to his “no vote” from last week’s Public Safety Committee, in which he criticized Mr. McDonnell for his record on immigration and his views on traffic enforcement.
Sotomartinez, whose district stretches from Echo Park to Hollywood, said he remains concerned about the new chief’s “history of working with ICE and expanding some of its policies in the county.”
“I don’t have any questions today, but I will vote against it,” he said.
The council also approved McDonnell’s annual salary of $450,000. The salary was lowered from the original proposed salary of $507,509, prompting criticism as the city faces financial difficulties.
During McDonnell’s City Council appearance, hundreds of activists gathered in front of City Hall Friday morning to rally against new “sanctuary city” laws that prohibit city personnel and resources from being used for federal immigration enforcement. We asked for its enactment.
Many held signs reading “Trump, get out of the LAPD” and “McDonnell is anti-immigrant,” while a band played cumbia and banda music from the back of a flatbed truck.
“Sheriff McDonnell does not deserve or have the trust of the communities he is sworn to protect,” Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Labor Organizing Network said in a statement.
The City Council’s vote on McDonnell was preceded by an intense public comment period, attended by about 85 speakers divided between supporters and detractors.
One speaker said he supports McDonnell because he is concerned about the safety of children in the West Side neighborhood and believes he can “help restore peace, safety and tranquility to our city.”
Like others supporting Mr. McDonnell, her comments were met with some applause and jeers.
Andres de Gun Kwon, senior policy adviser at the American Civil Liberties Union, said “thousands of families” have been separated because of the security services’ friendly relationship with federal immigration authorities.
The Reverend Stephen Cue Zinmarie, founder of Creating Justice LA, called McDonnell’s appointment a “spit in the face” after McDonnell was voted out of office by L.A. County residents after serving one term as sheriff. “I can call you,” he said. “Do you want to pay this guy $500,000 a year even though we’re in the budget deficit?”
Some in the Latino establishment community and some politicians said Bass would have been the first Latino leader in the long history of the LAPD, including former LAPD Deputy Commissioner Robert “Bobby” Arcos. He expressed disappointment that he was not selected. On the list of finalists presented to Bass by the Police Commission, McDonnell ranked third behind Arcos and Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides, who is Black.
At a press conference following his confirmation, McDonnell answered a question about whether he would cooperate with Trump’s deportation efforts.
“There’s no talk of mass roundups or police being involved in that. We don’t do anything like that,” McDonnell said. “If we do something like that, we’re alienating a lot of our population, a lot of communities. So it doesn’t make sense for us to do that.”
The new chief added, “We are here to keep everyone safe in every community across the city, and the way we do that is by fostering trust.”
Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
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