An eight-month search to find the Los Angeles Police Department’s next police chief came to an end on Friday, Oct. 4, with Mayor Karen Bass announcing that former Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell will fill the role, a crucial appointment in part because the city will host the 2028 Olympics. McDonnell, who served one term as sheriff from 2014 to 2018, has also headed the Long Beach Police Department and previously worked with LAPD for 28 years, achieving the rank of assistant chief. “To reduce crime and make Los Angeles safer by growing and strengthening the LAPD, building up community relations and making sure our city is prepared,” Bass said, “I have selected Jim McDonnell as the 59th chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is a leader, an innovator and a change maker and that’s what we need in L.A.” McDonnell joins current Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna as the two top law enforcement officials in the county, years after they each served as chief of police for Long Beach’s department. McDonnell’s goals, he said at Friday’s press conference in downtown Los Angeles, include enhancing public safety, restoring morale and bringing the department back to full strength. He also wants to strengthening public trust, ensuring respectful and constitutional policing and prepare LAPD for the challenges ahead. “In the next five years, the eyes of the world will be on us,” McDonnell said. “Los Angeles will host the World Cup, the Olympic and Paralympic Games; it will host the Super Bowl and an NBA All-Star game. Our entire city will be showcased, and we will be prepared.” Bass called McDonnell “one of America’s finest police professionals” who is nationally recognized. “To me, what is most important, as I said from the beginning, is to keep this city safe,” Bass said. “I feel very confident in one of the top law enforcement professionals in our country who was willing to come back to the department and lead us in a time when the department internally needs to be transformed, the city needs to feel safe and we need to prepare to welcome the world.” When asked about minority representation to lead the department, Bass said, “My whole life has been about inclusion and one thing that I do very deliberately and very assertively is to make sure that there is representation everywhere. I think there is work that needs to be done in the LAPD.” McDonnell praised Bass for her commitment to public safety. “The reason I’m here today is because I believe in her commitment — we will face our challenges together,” McDonnell said. “This is a time of great challenge, but a time of tremendous opportunity.” He said being named the next chief is “a dream realized. I love this city, and I understand the modern-day challenges our officers face in trying to protect it. “It’s a tremendous honor to lead the men and women of the LAPD,” McDonnell continued. “We will work hard to make sure that you are supported with your work, to be able to keep all Angelenos safe.” After a failed bid at re-election in 2018, to Alex Villanueva, McDonnell became the director of the Safe Communities Institute at the USC Price School of Public Policy. He apparently was one of three finalists for LAPD’s new chief submitted to Bass in August by the department’s Board of Police Commissioners. The board made it’s list of recommendations for the mayor on Aug. 21. “The board has discharged duties as set forth by the City’s Charter … and will be forwarding a recommended list of candidates to the mayor,” Erroll Southers, the board’s president, said at that meeting. Southers also endorsed McDonnell’s appointment at the USC Price School, at the time saying McDonnell “brings the experience, expertise, relationships and understanding of what progressive law-enforcement leadership and community engagement really mean.” During the search for candidates for police chief, Southers said the common themes pertaining to McDonnell included “honest, seasoned and a man of integrity.” McDonnell, who has spent his entire career in Los Angeles County, graduated from the Los Angeles Police Academy in 1981 and served as assistant chief under Chief William Bratton. He had applied to be the department’s chief in 2009 after Bratton left for New York City but lost out to Charlie Beck. While with LAPD, McDonnell specialized in connecting with the city’s diverse communities and prepared a community policing plan ultimately adopted by Bratton. McDonnell then left for Long Beach after being selected that city’s next chief — a surprise to some as the city had traditionally promoted from within. McDonnell stayed in Long Beach for four years before a successful run for Los Angeles County Sheriff in 2014. The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file officers, said in a statement the selection of McDonnell “confirms the mayor’s commitment to improve historic lows in officer staffing and officer morale and to fix LAPD’s broken discipline process. “We have every confidence in Chief McDonnell’s ability to hit the ground running to improve public safety in Los Angeles and to appoint an upper command staff that will do away with the status quo and turn a new page for the LAPD.” Los Angeles Councilman Paul Krekorian said McDonnell was an excellent choice “for a multitude of reasons,” including his more than 40 years of experience and his work in pioneering “the theory and practice of community policing. “He’s the steady hand we need to guide the LAPD through the challenges that lie ahead,” Krekorian said. Related Articles Crime and Public Safety | You can renew your driver’s license 3 months before it expires, rarely earlier Crime and Public Safety | Man fatally shot by at least one deputy in Loma Linda Crime and Public Safety | DNA on ignition device links Norco man to Line fire, authorities say Crime and Public Safety | DA’s office is reviewing the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who killed their parents in 1989 Crime and Public Safety | Car slams into Moreno Valley home, causing substantial damage and injuring driver