Shrinking LAPD | Trump Tariffs

for four hundred years. Hey, we change, We change. Now. I want to talk about the LAPD because it's again the issue has come up. We go back to We'll go back. Last year Mayor Karen Bass of LA gave pay raises to the rank and file cops and what she did sold it to us as an investment towards regrowing the LAPD to ninety five hundred members, which it was before the election in twenty twenty two. Now it should be around from what I understand, about ten thousand.

That's what sort of the general feeling is among folks that are in the police world. Ninety five hundred is just north of adequate. Adequate being C it's a C plus ten thousand being a okay. So since then you've got the mayor and leaders in the LAPD continuing to project optimism about reaching that goal of ninety five hundred members.

O contraire peer ain't gonna happen because behind the scenes, the cops, the officials are starting to confront the reality it's not going to have and anytime soon, and acknowledging that the department may even continue to shrink. It is now at eighty six hundred and twenty cops and it's going to continue below that, so twenty percent less than

it should be. Recruiting shortfalls, there's attrition. Leaders expect this year to lose more than one hundred and fifty police officers and that's the lowest deployment of cops in roughly thirty years. And I'm going to give you some reasons now. During public appearances, Bass, the Chief of Police, Jim McDonnell, other leaders still marking the case, still making the case the department needs to grow. We need more manpower to

maintain public safety while the department is shrinking. Wait a minute, if it's if we need to grow, but what's going on. Don't tell us that it's growing when it's not growing. A couple things. The Palisades fire just showed the department can be stretched very thin during a major disaster. We've got the upcoming World Cup, we have the Olympic Games in twenty twenty eight. All have massive security challenges. Now here's the other side of it, and I'm going to

continue on in a minute. The LAPD has gotten smaller, but by some measures, the city is becoming safer. Many types of violent crime are down. This is police Department data, especially homicides and shootings, and that's a year's long decline, So less of a chance that you get shot or killed, more of a chance that you get graffitied, burglarized, car broken into, car, stolen. LAPD leaders have debated for a

long time how many cops are really necessary. The push has always been for more manpower, more cops, but now some are saying, wait a minute. Even though the city itself is saying we need more cops, the police department is saying we need more cops. While cops are shrinking, some are saying, wait a minute, you know what, Maybe we don't now keep in mind the city of Houston and Chicago much smaller city to police, however, many more cops. I think the city of New York has fifteen or

twenty thousand police officers. I mean, it's a lot of people. But the city of New York is about the size of the Sherman Oaks Galley, isn't it where they cram ten million people in, Yet it has substantially more police officers. We don't have many cops in our city relative to the size of our city. So what's going on? Well, a lot of things are happening with no money. Nine to one one calls, it's getting longer and longer. Have you called nine one one recently, You're on hold, you

get a menu. HI, your call is very important to us, so hang on. Then. If this is a real emergency, press number one. If it's only a moderate emergency, press number two. And sometimes I love these menu calls. You have between ten and twelve minutes before your call is answered, sometimes twenty to twenty five minutes. I have called nine to one one calls when I've seen a crash on the freeway, and I'll immediately call nine one one, And I'm going from La to Orange County. I actually reach

Orange County before they get on the phone. That's part of our system where they're just ain't enough money. Now I have lived in Los Angeles, although now I live in Orange County, but I still come up to Los Angeles all the time. The LAPD is a big deal, always has been. And if we go back in history and I remember this, it wasn't that long ago where police officers were some of the most respected members of society. Ha think that's happening anymore. It's not so we're short

of police officers. We should have ten thousand. Matter of fact, well you've got the official saying, okay, we'll take ninety five hundred, not ten thousand. Okay, the problem is there's eighty six hundred and it is dropping. Just to give you an idea, the last class, the academy class had a big twenty one cops in it. That's it. Cops are not coming to the table. We don't have enough of them. Although the city and Karen Bass said we're growing, well,

in reality we're shrinking. And what are they doing. The city is doing plenty. First of all, older cops saying we'll pay you a ton of money. Retired cops come back trying to get new cops raising the money. Now here's the stat for you, which I found kind of interesting. As a starting cop in Los Angeles, you can get as much as eighty six thousand dollars. Now, I'm assuming those are cops that are coming from other agencies, or they have a bachelor's degree or accommodation or in the military,

and all of that has points. But up to eighty six thousand dollars, I think the starting rate is over fifty fifty five thousand dollars. If you have no experience, you're a brand new cop. The contract ratified in the fall of twenty twenty three, starting salary increased eighty six thousand dollars by nearly thirteen percent since the previous com tract and guaranteed thirty three percent annual raises. So LAPD

starting salaries are higher than Pasadena Long Beach Burbank. But if you become a comp in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica, the pay is even better. City council signed off on the raises. And of course there are those that are against cops or increasing the number of cops, and a lot of that happened from the George Floyd incident in

the Minneapolis Police Department. Of course, murdered or officer Chauvin, the previous officer Chauvin the erstwhile officer Chauvin killed George Floyd, murdered him and is in jail for decades and decades. All of a sudden, police were bad, bad guys, and there was a move to defund even dismantle the police completely. And the reason is, well, frankly, stupidity. Now, council Member Nthya Rama, and have to be fair, she is not

calling for defunding. She is calling against the raises because she was convinced they would that they wouldn't fix the real problem. And what's the real problem. Well, the real problem is how we deal with crime. See there's a philosophy there that criminals are criminals because it's our fault, it's society's fault. And so how do we deal with society? Well, what we do is we need a holistic alternative response. She says, hiring more cops now is distracting from the development.

This is a quote, by the way, hiring the fixation on hiring more cops now is distracting from the development and long term investment in community led programs that research has shown more effective in addressing the underlying causes of crime.

All right, so let me ask you a question, and that is, we want to cut the budget or not increase the budget of the police force, per this council member, And what we want to do is invest in community projects, after school programs, dealing with the kids out of areas that are high crime rates. You got areas that have gang bangers, you got areas that don't have really good schools. We're talking about minority areas that have high crime rates. So let's put a pile of money into those areas

for community projects versus hiring a cop. Now, I am guessing that a holistic approach would increase the budget of these community programs by billion, well at least hundreds of millions of dollars. The police department, by the way, has north of a billion dollar budget. I mean, this is no small way. Now, what is happening is young people are not coming into the police department because well, police departments are not viewed very favorably. People don't want to

be cops. So they're advertising on TikTok, they're doing marketing and it's not working. How do you get people? Well, I have some ideas of marketing. I mean, if I was the marketing person marketing manager for the LAPD and I was hired, I take out the billboards, big letters, you get to kill people. That would get me going. As a matter of fact, I want to share with you a quick story. One of the chief police officers years and years ago kept on inviting me to go

on a ride along with the police. I don't know if you've ever been or know someone that's on a ride a line that they let you go. And it's the real stuff too. It's not just you buzz around the city and you patrol. When the cop is called and you're in the car, you're on your way, and if it's a shooting, you're there and they tell you get the hell out of the way and you're told you're warned. And I kept on asking, or I was

asked a bill you want to do it? And I was supposed to talk about it because ostensibly, well I love the police anyways, I've always been so pro police, and they know it, so I didn't need that to show how great the cops were. And I kept on saying and asking do I get to shoot anybody? And they said no, And I replied with then why would I want to go on a ride along to watch you guys shoot someone. I want to do it. Can't do it, damn it. So the problem is that they

don't have enough cops. Eighty six thousand dollars at the end. And do we know what starting salary actually is for the police? I think it's in It was in the top forties. I think it's now fifty thousand. What is it, cono, I mean you're looking it up. The story is starting salary is eighty six thousand. No, that's for okay, that's this story. And that's for I'm assuming cops who are being transferred in from other departments who leave or as

I said, have military experience. That's for a trainee. Yeah, I mean that's crazy, and they don't have enough. And by the way, for those of you, and I'm now going to pitch for the department right now, I'm going to be a spokesperson for the department for those young people that want to become or thinking of becoming police officers. You do get to kill people, okay, you do? And if that is what you want to do, and a lot of us do. Hey, the LAPD is open to you. Okay,

we're done. Uh see, I'm telling you they should hire me now. Oh so, a little bit of politics I want to share with you and our new president, our new old president, and that is the president, and I think his heart is in the right place. Wants to bring back, or not lose American auto workers. He says we need American auto workers, which means American made cars with American labor. Now, if he was really serious about American auto workers, not that he's not, but I'll tell

you what would bring back auto workers. Get rid of all the robotics, get rid of to chnology. You don't know how many auto workers we lost when robotics came in, when technology wasn't around. I mean, thousands and thousands of auto workers in every plant. And those are good jobs too. United auto Workers is a very strong union. So what the President has done is said, we want to make sure that cars are made in America by American auto workers.

And he is hitting both Mexico and Canada with tariffs because too many cars are being brought in and if terriffs are being paid for theoretically by Canada and Mexico, which they're not. By the way, all tariffs are paid by US. When tariffs are in actually they're hit against

foreign foreign manufacturers. So what the President did is he has threatened a twenty five per cent tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico as soon as Saturday, arguing that if cars are as expensive built by Americans as built by Canadians or Mexicans or Mexico workers in Mexico, then of course you'd buy American and all these autoworkers would be employed and none would be let go. I

guess that's true in a way. I mean, all things being equal, If a car costs forty five thousand dollars and it's all built in America, and a car costs forty five thousand dollars as built in Canada, which way you're gonna go. Well, of course you're gonna go to the American built car. But here's the problem. This move of twenty five percent tariffs is as soon as Saturday is going to hit car dealerships and factories in the US virtually immediately and would add a minimum of thousands

of dollars to the cost of cars. And I'll explain why, because it's not just the cars that are assembled in the two countries and brought in ship to the United States, but cars built and American auto plants. Now, how is that possible if cars are built in American auto plants. What's the bitch about cars that are built in Mexico and Canada. We just don't buy them. Ooh guess what. Even American built cars have huge amount of Canadian and Mexican parts that can't be replaced very readily. I mean

over the course of months or years. The tariffs start on Saturday. According to the President, twenty five percent. Now you have to save the American auto industry because it's losing workers to Mexico or Canada. And the car dealers and the American manufacturers, well they get hit financial Well, they are reporting record profits this year and last, making money hand over fist with Canadian and Mexican cars and

or parts. What is absolutely clear is that the tariffs are going to up end production of cars across the continent and put the price of cars. I'm explaining why they're going to go up so high. Put the price of cars, which are already near record highs. I mean, look how much you're paying for a car relative to a few years ago, and it's going to be out of reach for a whole lot of people. I mean,

cars are just insanely expensive. And this Saturday there may very well be a twenty five percent tariff on all imports car and car parts imports from Canada and Mexico. Why because the President wants American cars sold and made American auto workers employed, and not Canadian auto and Mexican auto workers. So he goes, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna make cars more expensive from Canada and Mexico, and we're gonna sort of equal it out, and therefore

people are going to buy American made products. Here's the problem. There isn't a car in the United States that is made or sold, well certainly made, that at least doesn't have parts that come from Mexico or Canada. The President wants to save the American auto industry through tariffs, and he says that it's these foreign companies are gonna pay the tariffs. That's not true. It's the American factories that are paying the tariffs, which means if a car goes up.

If a tariff goes up several thousand dollars, who do you think pays for it? Of course you do, And where is that cost put in on the cost of the car? So what is going to happen if it's this Saturday, unless we start really talking And already Canada has caved in a couple of areas. We've got a couple of We've got Latino countries that have caved Columbia

for example. But when it comes to the auto industry, man, that's not an easy one to undo because every car that's assembled in the United States has parts for Mexico Canada, and it's going to simply cost way too much. No such thing in an all American car doesn't exist. We've got NAFTA, we got the USMCA trade deals, and so cars and parts moved pretty freely across the border, and sometimes multiple times before a car is finished. So what's

gonna happen with tariff? It's going to be like the market during COVID limited supplies of new cars for sale. If you remember the inability to bring in anything. The supply chain issue came in and there was there were fewer cars. The price of cars exploded, and that's what's going to happen here. And automakers are going to make a calculation. It's real simple, what does it cost us? And we're going to charge the buyers us. And at

this point slow down shutdowns could come fairly quickly. Plants in that operate in Mexico and Canada are going to shut down a little quicker than ours because it's you buy parts the way manufacturers. You buy parts that are met immediately know in inventory's parts anymore. Let me give you the numbers. Mexico built four million cars last year, Canada built one point three million. Okay, seventy percent. Seventy percent of the Canadian and Mexican assembled cars were shipped

the showroom in the United States. That's a lot. And we're not just talking Fords in Chevrolets either. For example, the Super U Outback is built in Indiana, the BMWX five SUVs South Carolina, Mercedes SUVs built in Alabama, the Kietelia Ride is in Georgia. Half of the ten million vehicles built in American plants last year were for foreign brands, and all of those cars that are quote made in

America are built with Mexican and Canadian parts. And it's not just Mexican and Canadian parts coming in, but it is also American parts going there, and tariffs are going to explode the cost. So is this the way it goes? Maybe? And as I said earlier in the earlier segment, if you really want to save American auto workers, and I mean really save jobs and increased jobs, just get rid

of the robotics, get rid of the technology. Before robotics came in, before technology was applied to the car industry, thousands and thousands of workers for each shift at auto plants. So what can you do? By the way, another number, thirteen point eight billion dollars worth of cars to Canada, that's what we shipped twenty six billion dollars worth of parts. It goes the other way also, I mean, it is a god awful mess. So the major auto manufacturers were

asked what's going to happen didn't have a comment. Volkswagener said, we're not going to comment on speculation. They have a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the largest plant in Mexico. And if it production is scaled back or shipments for Mexico or Canadian parts are put on hold, Well, you're gonna see dealers jacking up their prices virtually immediately. So you know what are you gonna do? Yeah, we're gonna pay a lot more unless the President caves on those

tariffs because they really make no sense. There's stuff that the President does that make sense, or east at least has a logic to it. For example, the immigration issue, there's a logic to it. There is no logic to this none. It's exactly opposite of what he is going to say, exactly opposite what's going to happen. And we're not going to know about it until you buy a car that you could have bought for forty two thousand dollars and it's going to cost you forty eight thousand dollars.

All right, tomorrow morning, Amy, who is back? It's a wake up call at five am the rest of us. That's the deal at I come in at six until right about now, Gary and Shannon are up. This is KFI AM sixty. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app