Shootings by Los Angeles police officers have increased dramatically this year, prompting Mayor Karen Bass to issue a statement Friday that said she is “deeply concerned” and seeking an explanation.
LAPD officers have fired their weapons in 46 incidents so far this year — killing 14 people and wounding 23 others — a roughly 70% increase compared with 2024 and the highest annual shooting total by the department since 2015.
The uptick in LAPD shootings comes despite crime rates in the city continuing to fall, and with officers registering fewer interactions with members of the public than in previous years.
The number of shootings by LAPD officers also stands in stark contrast to the similarly-sized L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, whose deputies have shot 11 people so far in 2025, killing nine of them. The data appear to contradict the explanation given by LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, who has said his department’s rise in shootings is the result of heightened violence against law enforcement officers.
In a video released Friday evening, McDonnell said he shared concerns over the recent uptick in shootings. “But when individuals put innocent lives in danger, it is our sworn duty to put ourselves between you and that overwhelming threat,” he said.
At a meeting last month, several police commissioners asked the department to identify ways to reduce the use of deadly force and requested an in-depth look at how the LAPD’s shooting numbers compare with the Sheriff’s Department. McDonnell assured the commission that a review will be done after the L.A. County data are made available to the LAPD.
At a meeting Tuesday, LAPD Assistant Chief Dominic Choi said it would be “tough” to draw accurate comparisons because of how the statistics are compiled. Without identifying Sheriff’s Department by name, Choi said that the LAPD had access to data on shootings only in which suspects were wounded or killed.
When The Times contacted the Sheriff’s Department this week, a spokesperson emailed the agency’s complete shooting numbers the following day.
Sheriff Robert Luna told The Times that he’s a “little uncomfortable” drawing comparisons between the two agencies, saying that shooting rates can be affected by many variables.
“Their numbers are their numbers, and ours are ours,” he said.
Luna scoffed at the suggestion that his department was not promptly handing over its use-of-force data to LAPD officials.
The sheriff pointed out that the shooting data are readily available to LAPD officials — and the public — on the “Transparency” page of the department’s website.
He said that ongoing training in mental health intervention and de-escalation has been critical to his agency’s year-over-year decline in uses of deadly force. Beyond that, he said, deputies are also getting better at finding alternatives to pulling their firearms out in challenging and dangerous settings.
Luna noted that the department — which patrols dozens of cities and unincorporated communities across the county — will continue seeking ways to reduce the use of force, saying that the number of shootings could just as easily rise next year if it’s not a point of emphasis.
Last week, the LAPD issued a news release saying that while crime was down overall, a rise in the “level of violence” against officers was among the reasons for the “significant” increase in police shootings.
The release pointed to increases in incidents involving suspects armed with a gun, which rose from seven in 2024 to 12 so far this year.
The LAPD said more suspects fired at officers this year, with 12 instances compared with seven in 2024. Officers also encountered more people armed with knives, swords and other edged weapons, up from six to 11 such incidents when compared to the same time last year.
A Times database of LAPD shootings found that roughly 1 in 4 shootings involved a person with an edged weapon. In February, LAPD officers killed of a transgender woman holding a knife at a Pacoima motel room after she called 911 to report that she had been kidnapped, one of several incidents that drew criticism.
Shootings of people who are holding replica guns are also up year-over-year, from four to nine. Under state law, such weapons are not considered deadly, and a person carrying them is considered unarmed; but department officials argued that they are “visually indistinguishable from real firearms in rapidly escalating situations.”
When individuals shoot at officers, the officers are confronted with life-or-death, leaving officers no alternative but to engage,” the LAPD release said. “While we are proud to report that all categories of crime are trending down, violent assaults on our officers have increased tremendously.”
In a statement Friday, the mayor expressed how “deeply concerned” she was by the increase in shootings and said she met with McDonnell that morning. She pledged to work with the chief and the Police Commission to identify any measures to reduce these incidents.
“I am particularly concerned about how individuals’ mental health may be factoring into these incidents,” the statement by Bass said. “Too many times, our society lets people’s mental health deteriorate so significantly that they can either become the victims or the perpetrators of crimes.”
The mayor’s statement came on the heels of two separate LAPD shootings on Thursday afternoon and early Friday, which left one person dead and another wounded. According to reports, the first occurred about 3:44 p.m. at an apartment complex in Hollywood, where officers had responded to a report of a “suicidal subject.”
On arrival, police said they encountered a man with a knife and officers tried to subdue him with a foam round; they opened fire when he charged at them, killing him. In the second case, officers pulled over a reportedly stolen vehicle in the area of Ninth Street and Gladys Avenue, and shot one of the suspects under circumstances that remain unclear. The man is expected to survive.
Both incidents remain under investigation.
The Times found that the 63 officers who fired their weapons so far this year had on average 8.5 years of department experience; the most junior was a probationary officer with roughly a year on the job, while the most senior was a 28-year veteran. The shootings also broke along racial lines, with Latinos comprising more than half of the officers who fired their weapons and the people who were shot and killed.
The majority of incidents involved a single shooter.
On the same day the commission asked for the updated shooting numbers, the civilian panel also signed off on the extension of a pilot program that gave LAPD officers up to 72 hours after firing their weapons to submit to an interview — under the assumption that the adrenaline of being in a shooting fogged their ability to recall details. Critics have argued that the extra time would allow for officers to get their stories straight and justify their use of deadly force.
Previously, most officers were interviewed shortly after a shooting occurred.
Activists who attend commission meetings every week say that the dramatic rise in deadly force incidents is proof that nothing has changed in a city that has seen the most police shootings in the U.S. in years past. They contend that LAPD officers continue to shoot people needlessly when other options exist, and that the commission has consistently cleared them of wrongdoing in recent years — sending dangerous message to the rank-and-file officers that even serious uses of force will be tolerated. And although community programs seeking non-police responses to mental health calls have shown promise, advocates say that they continue to be hobbled by a lack of funding.
Officials said that the department has in recent years made numerous changes to curb police shootings, including adopting so-called de-escalation training focused on slowing down volatile situations, particularly those involving people who may be mentally ill.
LAPD officers used to shoot people with far greater frequency, with officers opening fire more than 100 times during some years in the early 1990s. Officials have touted the declines in police shootings since then as evidence that de-escalation and other tactics are working.
The department is also making less-lethal devices — such as Tasers, beanbag shotguns and foam round launchers — more readily available to officers, while limiting the number of cops who have their guns drawn.
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