Jim McDonnell, LAPD & the Olympic Imperative
Chief McDonnell vision for LAPD is fundamentally incompatible with the reform-minded direction Los Angeles has been struggling toward for 50 years.
When LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell publicly announced last week that his department would refuse to enforce California’s “No Secret Police Act,” it revealed more than a policy disagreement—it laid bare a philosophy of policing at odds with decades of reform in Los Angeles.
The law, passed amid growing fear of masked federal agents conducting brazen kidnappings on city streets, explicitly bars federal officers from wearing disguises during operations. Standing before a bank of microphones, McDonnell derided the law as “not well thought out” and said LAPD would not enforce it. For a chief of the nation’s second-largest city, as federal agents ramp up raids and seizures in Angelenos’ neighborhoods, it was a striking moment.
It was also not unusual. In his 15 months as chief, McDonnell has consistently shown contempt for civilian authority, tolerance for police violence, hostility toward the press, and a drive to militarize LAPD under the guise of mega-event security. He is rebuilding the old LAPD that had only recently been partially dismantled.
Civilian Oversight and Tolerance for Violence
For decades, Los Angeles has tried to build a police department that respects civilian authority. From the Watts and 1992 uprisings to the Rampart scandal and the federal consent decree, reforms have sought to ensure that the chief of police is not a free agent.
Courts, lawmakers, and oversight bodies set boundaries; LAPD is expected to comply, not challenge them.
McDonnell’s record shows a different approach. Last year, he publicly criticized a court injunction barring the use of force on journalists, framing constitutional protections as obstacles to law enforcement. When councilmembers challenged LAPD’s use of force against anti-ICE protesters last summer, McDonnell dismissed concerns as based on “edited video clips or anecdotal accounts” instead of promising reform.
In just three days last fall, LAPD officers fired in three separate incidents, contributing to a rise in police shootings from 20 to 31 at that point in the year. When questioned about how to reduce these shootings, McDonnell blamed “an uptick in the willingness of criminals… to assault officers head-on” and insisted that officers simply respond as needed, portraying lethal force as inevitable rather than something leadership could address.
Violence under his leadership is not limited to individual officers’ actions. It stems from command decisions and operational tactics. During the June 2025 protests, LAPD deployed tear gas and thousands of “less-lethal” rounds—breaking a half-century tradition of avoiding chemical crowd control. McDonnell’s policies have made such aggressive tactics standard rather than exceptional.
Again and again, when faced with criticism from elected officials or oversight bodies, rather than responding with a pledge of “we will do better,” McDonnell’s message has essentially been, “we have done no wrong.”
Cooperation with Federal Immigration Enforcement
McDonnell’s record on immigration has been troubling—as advocates familiar with his tenure as Los Angeles County Sheriff warned when Mayor Bass appointed him police chief.
City leaders have proclaimed Los Angeles to be a “sanctuary city” and insist that LAPD will not enforce immigration rules or aid federal immigration enforcement. That may be the policy, but it’s neither the reality nor the perception.
LAPD officers participate in nearly three dozen joint task forces with ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, and other agencies. Information and resources—including automated license plate reader data—are routinely shared, despite state laws and sanctuary policies.
McDonnell has repeatedly referred to federal immigration enforcement officers as LAPD’s “partners,” and he has meant it. A year ago, in South Los Angeles, video of an immigration raid at an apartment building on East 41st Street showed Homeland Security and ICE agents swarming the building—with multiple LAPD vehicles positioned alongside them, blocking traffic as people were taken into custody.
Militarization and Surveillance
Under McDonnell, LAPD is significantly expanding its stock of military-style equipment. This includes armored vehicles such as BearCats, 40-millimeter launchers that fire hard-foam or chemical rounds, flash-bang grenades, and other so-called “less-lethal” weapons that look and feel more like battlefield gear than city policing tools.
The department has sought more armored trucks and SUVs, additional launchers, and large quantities of specialty ammunition.
LAPD is also investing in tools that allow it to see more, store more, and share more information about people’s movements and identities: drones launched as “first responders” to fly over neighborhoods and protests; high-resolution camera networks; and automated license-plate readers that log where cars are, when, and how often.
Software can run facial-recognition searches against large image databases. On their own, each tool can seem technical or benign—just another way to “modernize” policing—but together they create an infrastructure where large parts of the city are continuously watched, data is retained and analyzed, and information easily flows into regional and federal systems.
The Olympic Imperative
What ties all these threads together is the long shadow of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Preparing for the Olympics is part of the mandate Mayor Bass gave McDonnell when she hired him, and it has become the defining principle of his leadership.
Decisions about force size, the visibility of armored vehicles, or the routine use of crowd-control weapons are now framed as matters of Olympic readiness. The effect is not temporary; structures built for the Games are being folded into everyday policing, reshaping how LAPD relates to protesters, immigrants, and the press long before the first athlete arrives.
History offers a warning. In 1984, Olympic “security” justified pouring military-grade hardware into LAPD, building sprawling intelligence networks, and sanitizing Black, Latino, and immigrant neighborhoods—a strategy that outlasted the Games and helped set the stage for the 1992 uprising.
McDonnell’s invocation of the Olympics echoes that playbook, asking Angelenos to forget the consequences of militarized, warrior-style policing.
Warrior vs. Guardian Policing
This is troubling to anyone who has followed the work of reformers striving to replace what civil rights attorney Connie Rice calls “warrior policing” with “guardian policing”.
In the warrior model—think the Daryl Gates-era LAPD—officers treat communities as battlefields, dissent as a threat, and accountability as optional. In the guardian model, restraint is strength, de-escalation is a moral obligation, and courts, journalists, and civilian oversight are partners in public safety.
History shows that protecting rights first produces both safety and legitimacy, while warrior policing provokes the disorder it claims to prevent.
McDonnell’s Olympic imperative entrenches the warrior model. It treats Los Angeles as a security zone, normalizes military equipment and aggressive tactics, and sidelines civilian oversight—all under the justification of mega-event “readiness.”
This is fundamentally incompatible with the reform-minded direction Los Angeles has been struggling toward for 50 years.
What’s Next
In recent days, a small group of elected officials—Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martínez, Monica Rodriguez, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, and Eunisses Hernandez; State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez; and Assemblymember Isaac Bryan—have publicly condemned McDonnell’s remarks.
Over the past year, Soto-Martínez and Hernandez have consistently raised alarms about various aspects of McDonnell’s leadership. But most public officials have remained quiet, even as the LAPD’s new direction grows more apparent.
Mayor Bass has been conspicuously silent. It’s unclear whether she agrees with McDonnell’s direction, fears the political cost of confrontation, or accepts a retrograde LAPD as the price of hosting the Olympics.
When Los Angeles elected Bass, no one expected LAPD would roll back decades of reform on her watch—but that’s exactly what’s happening.
With the World Cup weeks away and the 2028 Olympics around the corner, time is running out to rein in McDonnell. Unless the mayor and more elected officials speak out and act, Los Angeles risks a future where warrior policing dominates, civilian oversight and sanctuary policies are hollow, and the Olympics become a pretext for permanent militarization.
Mike Bonin is executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State LA, a senior fellow with the Los Angeles Forward Institute, and co-host of LA Podcast. He served on the Los Angeles City Council from 2013 to 2022, and taught the politics and policy of public safety at Occidental College from 2023 to 2025.