Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is acknowledging her mistakes and asking voters for another opportunity. In an interview with The California Post, she outlined plans to accelerate police hiring and address street homelessness across the city.
During an exclusive interview with The Post, Bass said she had not realized “how profoundly broken” Los Angeles’ homelessness system had become. She also argued that external restrictions that previously limited her efforts have now been removed.
The incumbent mayor said Friday that the lessons of her first term could persuade frustrated voters to support her again, including residents still dealing with the fallout from the devastating January 2025 wildfires that began while she was in Ghana.
Asked to identify her greatest regret, Bass answered without hesitation: “The biggest regret is most obviously that I wasn’t here.”
She cited the work of her staff to help residents rebuild, along with her trips to Sacramento and Washington to secure financial assistance. But Bass conceded that those efforts have not changed public perceptions.
“I’m a workhorse and not a show horse, and I’ve paid for it politically,” she said.
If reelected, Bass said she would increase the LAPD’s ranks to 9,500 officers ahead of the 2028 Olympics, overhaul the city’s homeless housing system and expand mental health and addiction services to help people leave the streets permanently.
Her plan centers on fixing a police recruitment process that can take as long as a year to bring new officers onto the force. Bass wants to rebuild the LAPD to 9,500 officers.
She has already replaced the head of the city’s Personnel Department, which manages hiring, and signed an executive directive intended to reduce the process to 180 days.
“Staffing up the department after years of decline is one of my top priorities. We’re cutting the red tape and streamlining processes to turn that around,” she said.
The administration’s objective is to fill police academy classes more quickly, move recruits through training faster and bring in officers at a rate that exceeds retirements and other departures.
The LAPD had approximately 8,550 sworn officers in July, its lowest staffing level in nearly 25 years and a sharp drop from about 10,000 in 2020.
The city budget includes funding for 510 new hires this year, but retirements and resignations could erase those additions. City projections indicate the department may have only 8,555 officers by summer 2027, far below Bass’ target.
Bass also strongly defended LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, whom her election opponent, City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, has promised to replace before his term expires in 2030.
“I think that she doesn’t have a clue what is needed in terms of recruiting and hiring a police chief,” Bass said.
The mayor said her nationwide search for McDonnell lasted 10 months and warned that removing him could leave Los Angeles with a new chief only six months before the Olympics. “That’s insanity,” she added.
Homelessness remains another central issue for Bass, with the city’s street population rising to 45,194 from 41,980 when she took office in 2022. The 2026 count recorded a 3.4% year-over-year increase, while street homelessness jumped 7.9% after declining for two consecutive years.
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“I knew the system was broken, but how profoundly broken it was, I did not know,” she said. “The system was never designed to end homelessness. It was only set up to manage,” she added.
Bass wants to restructure the system so Los Angeles has greater control over homeless housing funded by the city.
At present, the embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority handles housing placements across the county. As a result, units paid for by the city can be assigned to people from elsewhere while thousands of residents remain homeless on Los Angeles streets.
“In many, many cases, they (the homeless) were not people from Los Angeles,” Bass said.
Her proposed solution is a new city-county agreement that would give Los Angeles access to the region’s homelessness database and more authority over placements in city-funded housing.
City and county leaders have approved the agreement in principle. It would allow Los Angeles to give priority to people living on its streets instead of relying on a countywide system that does not automatically favor them.
Bass said the change could help “end the majority of street homelessness,” including the sprawling encampments that have angered residents for years.
She also plans to expand access to mental health and addiction treatment.
“If you just take people randomly off the street and put them in an apartment and just expect them to magically heal… it’s naive,” she said.
A California Post/McLaughlin poll conducted Oct. 15-19 showed Raman ahead of Bass, 46.7% to 38.8%, while 13.5% of likely voters remained undecided.
Only 25.5% of respondents approved of Bass’ performance, compared with 71.7% who disapproved.
A more recent UC Berkeley/Los Angeles Times poll put the candidates at 40% each, with 19% undecided. It also found that 65% of likely voters held an unfavorable view of Bass.
Bass admitted that she had devoted too little time to explaining her administration’s accomplishments.
“I didn’t focus on that. That was a mistake,” she said.
With Tuesday’s election approaching, Bass is asking voters to give her more time to deliver results that remained out of reach during her first term. She is presenting the contest as a choice between continuing the progress she says she has made and pursuing an untested alternative.
“We are at a crossroads where we can soar into the future,” she said, “or we can throw our city up for experimentation on different theories and ideas.”
