In his first major reforms since taking over the Los Angeles Police Department in November, Chief Jim McDonnell has given over 12 officials in the Upper Rank with new duties.
Faced with an ongoing struggle to plead for uncertainty over his plans for new recruits and overhauls, McDonnell gave the first indication of how he intends to reorganize by bringing back three vice chiefs, Michael Limkunas and Scott Harrelson (Scott Harrelson) to top positions and reviving the long-term Bureau.
The move was announced last week in a division-wide email, but is not expected to take effect until later this month.
Thin Guide Lides, who lost to McDonnell to become chief last fall, will become the assistant chief in charge of the operations office, which oversees the patrol functions. According to local news reports, she was recently announced as a finalist for the same job in Fort Worth. Her recent promotions have seen some promotions within the department as a move that persuades her to stay. She will become the highest-ranking black woman in the history of the department.
Harrelson will be in charge of department training and recruitment efforts as head of the Department of Support Services on behalf of Assistant Daniel Randolph, who is expected to retire in the coming weeks.
Filling in McDonnell’s inner circle is two other holdovers from former Chief Michelle Moore’s administration. Limuknas and Dominique Che served as interim chiefs until McDonnell took over in November. Che remained assistant chief, but was appointed McDonnell’s Chief of Staff. In fact, it’s the second part of the department.
Limkunas, the director of the Interior, currently runs the Special Operations Bureau.
McDonnell also revived the department’s HR office. This was closed in 2004 when McDonnell was a senior employee of former Chief William J. Bratton. He didn’t immediately say what the new bureau’s responsibility would be.
It is unclear whether McDonnell will have to submit some of his reorganization plans to the city council.
When he got to work last year, McDonnell initially said he wanted to understand how he changed since he spent at least three months studying LAPD and rose to rank. He left in 2010 and became a top Long Beach police officer and served as LA County Sheriff. His early review timeline has been abandoned, he told reporters at a press conference last week.
A series of major incidents presented an unexpected opportunity to assess senior staff and see how they carried out “crisis mode,” McDonnell said.
The Chief added that it delayed the reorganization of “budget results to see where we are,” and delayed the completion of a multi-month study in the department by Rand Corp., a global policy think tank that was brought to conduct a top-down review last year. The study was recently concluded and McDonnell said it was considering its recommendations as well as those conducted by numerous internal working groups convened to consider recruitment, discipline and other workplace issues.
Without providing details, McDonnell suggested that another of his priorities would be to strengthen the department’s detective rank and overhaul the system that handles fraudulent complaints against officers.
“I have a rough idea of what I think it looks like, but I certainly want to get input from people who deal with it every day on how to best deal with the nuances of doing the work today with the number of resources we have,” he told reporters.
As McDonnell is getting ready to host events such as next year’s World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, pressure from critics who said he is moving more slowly as it needs more urgency.
In other personnel moves announced last week, McDonnell moved Deputy Prime Minister Mark Reina from the Training Bureau to the Southern Bureau, and promoted Germany’s Hartado, the department’s immigration coordinator, to deputy chief of the Central Bureau, the epicenter of recent protests.
Hurtado is named in at least two pending lawsuits by LAPD officials he accused of hiding unfair use of force by officers during the 2020 protests. The city has denied fraud and is fighting the case in court.
“As far as I know, I have been appointed as a witness in such cases and have no freedom to talk about the ongoing lawsuit,” said Hurtado when it was reached Monday by The Times.
McDonnell also dropped Aide Blake Chau to his civil servant commander. This is a similar trajectory to McDonnell, who was created to drop ranks during his former Charlie Beck term. Colonel Ray Vallois, who helped oversee the department’s response to the Palisade Fire, was raised to the commander of the Valley Bureau.
Source link
