Consider the debate swirling around Police Chief Jim McDonnell. Raman contends that McDonnell has lost the trust of Angelenos, pointing to what she describes as a widespread perception that the department is cooperating too closely with federal immigration agents. Yet she has offered little concrete evidence to back up either claim, and both assertions are shakier than her campaign rhetoric suggests.

Bass, for her part, bears direct responsibility for McDonnell’s tenure. She appointed him to a five-year term in 2024, backed by a City Council vote that included Raman’s support, and has since stood by his efforts to rebuild a department that had been losing officers to attrition.

Not long after that appointment, the Trump administration’s aggressive push to militarize immigration enforcement arrived in full force in Los Angeles, escalating tensions in a way that mirrored confrontations in other Democratic-led cities across the country. That put McDonnell and his department in a difficult spot. LAPD policy since 1979 has barred officers from making stops based solely on suspected immigration status, a rule designed to encourage victims and witnesses — regardless of their legal status — to cooperate with police without fear.

At the same time, the department has a long-standing duty to protect everyone within city limits, a mandate that has occasionally put LAPD officers in the position of shielding ICE agents from angry crowds. Raman and others have criticized this as creating troubling optics, suggesting it makes local police look like they’re siding with federal immigration authorities over immigrant communities.

That criticism misses the point. ICE’s tactics in Los Angeles have been widely seen as heavy-handed and counterproductive, and city leaders are right to push back against those operations at the policy level. But pushing back doesn’t mean standing by while federal agents are assaulted. The LAPD’s obligation to protect and serve extends even to ICE agents whose presence in the city stems from a political agenda out of Washington.

It’s also worth remembering that federal authorities retain the legal right to enforce immigration law, even if the LAPD isn’t obligated to assist them. A useful comparison is marijuana enforcement: city police can’t block DEA agents from doing their jobs, but that doesn’t mean LAPD officers are required to arrest every person smoking a joint on a street corner.

Whatever one thinks of McDonnell’s overall leadership, decisions about his future shouldn’t hinge on the flawed premise that the LAPD must withhold protection from ICE agents just to send a political message. ICE’s approach in Los Angeles deserves criticism — but leaving federal agents exposed to violence isn’t the answer.

If there’s a real case to be made about whether McDonnell should keep his job, it deserves more scrutiny than a campaign talking point can provide. The proper way to judge a police chief is by looking at crime trends, officer conduct and how seriously the department takes allegations of misconduct. Are officers respecting people’s constitutional rights? Is their work actually making Los Angeles safer?

By that measure, McDonnell has some strong results to point to. Los Angeles recorded 230 homicides in 2025 — a drop of 54 from the previous year and the lowest total since 1966. Violent crime and property crime both declined citywide, signaling real progress on public safety.

But there’s a more troubling trend as well: LAPD officers discharged their firearms more than 45 times last year, a 70% jump that resulted in 14 deaths. When Bass raised concerns about the rise in officer-involved shootings, McDonnell pledged that every incident would undergo rigorous review, both through internal investigations and independent oversight.

That commitment is a good sign, and city leaders should hold McDonnell and his command staff accountable for how officers use force — while recognizing that in police work, some use of force is unavoidable and, at times, justified.

Former LAPD Chief Bernard Parks once observed that the department tends to discipline officers frequently but fires too few of them. His broader point remains relevant: no chief can prevent every improper use of force, but a chief can and must set clear expectations and hold officers to them consistently.

Then there’s the question of money, which the mayoral race has muddled rather than clarified. Bass has called for increased funding for the LAPD, while Raman has pushed back — framing the mayor as the department’s defender and herself as its critic. But that framing oversimplifies a complicated issue.

Slashing the LAPD’s budget isn’t an effective response to legitimate criticism of the department, just as simply pouring more money into it won’t fix systemic problems on its own. Still, adequate staffing matters, and budget cuts can sometimes lead to more chaos and confrontation rather than less. Public safety funding should be driven by strategy — reducing crime while ensuring accountability — not used as a political cudgel to punish or reward the department.

The real question voters deserve to hear addressed isn’t whether Jim McDonnell should be fired or whether he has lost the city’s confidence in some abstract sense. It’s whether Bass and Raman can articulate a clear vision for what they want the LAPD to prioritize and how they intend to hold the department accountable to that vision.

From there, civilian leadership — the mayor and City Council — needs to translate that vision into concrete direction for the department. Only then can the LAPD and its chief fairly be judged on whether they’re carrying out that mission effectively and within the bounds of the law.

A police chief who reduces crime, holds officers accountable and genuinely serves the community deserves to keep the job. One who fails on those counts should be replaced. That’s the standard voters should be asking Bass and Raman to meet — not campaign soundbites about confidence and optics.

Original source: CalMatters

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Michael Sainato

The largest union of academic workers, which represents more than 48,000 graduate student workers throughout the University of California system, will hold a strike authorization vote as early as next week in response to how universities have cracked down on students’ Gaza protests.

“The use and sanction of violent force to curtail peaceful protest is an attack on free speech and the right to demand change, and the university must sit down with students, unions, and campus organizations to negotiate, rather than escalate,” stated an announcement of the strike vote from UAW Local 4811. Earlier this year, the union voted by a margin of more than 9 to 1 in favor of supporting a ceasefire, according to the announcement.

The graduate workers last went on strike in November 2022 over a new union contract, which was the largest strike in US higher education history. They recently merged two UAW locals, 2865 and 5810, under the single UAW Local 4811.

“We have been calling on the University of California to de-escalate and negotiate with the protesters over their very urgent and moral concerns and it failed to do that and it failed to protect students and workers and allowed this violence to occur,” Rafael Jaime, co-president of UAW 4811 and a graduate worker at UCLA, told The Guardian. “We’re holding a strike authorization vote to hold the university accountable and demand the university respect the members’ right to protected speech and right to protest.”

He said the union also plans to file unfair labor practice charges against the University of California over the university’s use of LAPD against protesters and for changing policies unilaterally in response to the protests without bargaining.

“This is the defining issue of our generation and its really important for all, not just workers at the University of California but across the entire nation to speak up and to ensure every worker has the right to speak on this issue,” added Jaime. “We believe all workers, all students have a fundamental right to engage in protests and engage in free speech and universities need to respect that right.”

The United Auto Workers, with 400,000 active members and over 500,000 retirees, is the largest US union to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, which they did in December 2023.

UAW President Shawn Fain recently reaffirmed the union’s position. “Our union has been calling for a ceasefire for six months. This war is wrong and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong,” Fain said in a statement on 1 May.

Graduate student workers are also calling on the National Labor Relations Board to weigh in on how universities have been responding to Pro-Palestine protests and whether those responses violate US labor laws and collective bargaining agreements with unions on campus.

The Graduate Labor Organization at Brown University has filed several unfair labor practice charges against the university since March 2024 in regards to Pro-Palestine protests and the university’s responses to them.

Forty-one students at Brown University was arrested and charges remain despite the pro-Palestine encampment dispersing as part of negotiations which included a planned vote by the university’s highest governing body for October 2024 on divesting from companies affiliated with Israel. The charges filed by the union allege Brown University unilaterally changed protest policies without bargaining and that made threats of retaliation toward union members for participating in Pro-Palestine campus protests.

“It’s really about the university trying to leverage this fact that as graduate workers we do have student status and kind of using that as a workaround for violating labor law and this has been their playbook on a whole host of issues,” said Michael Ziegler, political director of the Graduate Labor Organization and graduate worker at Brown University. “In the past five years, we’ve had something like 20 protests on the main green and there was never any issue, the university didn’t take these actions. This is new and I think a dangerous attempt by them to clamp down on the rights of speech and protected concerted action.”

UAW Local 872, which represents around 3,000 graduate workers at USC, has recently filed an unfair labor practice charge against the university over arrests of at least five union members. The union has called for charges to be dropped against all 93 protesters who were arrested on 24 April and for the university to concede to demands from USC Divest from Death Coalition.

“USC’s summoning of LAPD riot police to arrest their own students and workers for peacefully demonstrating is abhorrent and wrong,” said Maile McCann, a Local 872 member and PhD Candidate in the Civil Engineering department at USC, in a statement on the charge. “The administration’s actions show an alarming disregard for our right as students and union members to engage in peaceful demonstrations, and their decisions have put international students in particular at serious risk. USC’s unnecessary escalation has resulted in a shameful waste of public resources for the purposes of silencing dissent.”

A spokesperson for USC said in an email, “we believe the charge is without merit and intend to defend our position before the National Labor Relations Board.”

Brown University and the University of California system did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Brown University has previously said in response to the first unfair labor practice charge, “individuals are not absolved from abiding by Brown policies by virtue of union membership.” The University of California system has not yet publicly commented on the planned strike vote by graduate student workers.

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