The Brief

Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said Wednesday he was proud of his six-year tenure as leader of the nation’s second-largest police department, even as critics faulted him for failing to advance much-needed reforms.

Moore has announced his retirement, effective at the end of February.

In an appearance on LAist’s AirTalk program, Moore said he thought it was the “right time” to retire — just a year after his appointment by Mayor Karen Bass to a second five-year term. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family and that he was moving to Tennessee where his daughter lives.

“I have a department that I am quite proud of,” Moore said. “I’ll miss the ability to brag about the great work that our men and women go out and do every day.”

Moore, 63, acknowledged the troubled history of the department, where he spent more than 42 years of his policing career.

“We represent the very best in policing and unfortunately we have also had some of the darkest moments in this profession … and the lasting impact that still has on communities is something a chief needs to be mindful of.”

Asked about allegations by one of his own detectives that he may have ordered an investigation into Mayor Karen Bass regarding a scholarship she received from USC, Moore responded bluntly: “It's a lie.”

Moore also sharply criticized a report by City Controller Kenneth Mejia that found most of the helicopter flight time from fiscal years 2018 through 2022 wasn’t connected to high-priority crimes. He said he believed Mejia’s report was colored by a “bias” against the LAPD.

Mejia has defended his report and said “some transportation and ceremonial flights were an inefficient, inappropriate use of city funds.”

Moore touts accomplishments

During the Wednesday morning interview, Moore hailed what he saw as some of his biggest accomplishments. “We just closed the year — the second year in a row — with a reduction in violent crime.”

According to department data, violent crime — including homicide, rape and robbery — is down 1.2% from two years ago.

When he announced his retirement at a Friday news conference, Moore said he’d had success “across a broad spectrum of topics unmatched by any other law enforcement agency in the county.” Among his accomplishments, he has touted limits on officers’ use of pretextual traffic and pedestrian stops, efforts to diversify the department and the creation of a new Community Safety Partnership Bureau.

Moore has called the bureau “the evolution of community-driven policing.” Under the community safety partnership model, officers are assigned to housing projects for several years to focus on community safety through problem-solving rather than arrests.

Rice not a fan of Moore

But the woman who was one of the driving forces behind the model gave Moore low marks, despite the creation of the bureau.

“I think Michel Moore is a great example of a spectacular enforcement chief who didn’t really like a lot of the progress that had been made under community policing,” civil rights attorney Connie Rice told LAist.

She said Moore “took the department back to those days” when the focus was on arrests.

At the same time, Rice said, Moore was chief “at a very difficult time.”

“I think it was hard to be a chief anywhere because of the pandemic and because of the George Floyd protests,” she said.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in L.A. and around the country in the summer of 2020 as a reaction not only to Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis on May of that year, but to speak out against the killings of Black and brown people by law enforcement and call for significant police reform.

Moore took a knee

The demonstrations produced a moment that left many of Moore’s own officers with a bad taste in their mouth. To this day, many remain offended that he took a knee with protesters.

The protests also produced what many see as one of the LAPD’s biggest failures under Moore. An independent report found the department was ill-prepared and in disarray during the early intense days of summer protests, leading to improper use of force against peaceful protesters and unlawful detentions of thousands of demonstrators.

Advocates of police reform expressed an array of concerns about Moore’s tenure, including three killings by officers involving people in apparent mental health crises during the first three weeks of 2023. One was the killing of Keenan Anderson, a mentally ill man who went into cardiac arrest after officers repeatedly tased him in a Venice intersection.

“I have not seen meaningful reform under Moore,” said Tim Williams, a former detective with the LAPD’s elite Robbery Homicide Division who is now a police use-of-force expert. Williams said he hopes the new chief will eliminate a lingering “us-versus-them mentality” within the department toward the community.

Moore won praise from a range of police leaders after he announced his retirement, including former Chief Charlie Beck, who told the Los Angeles Times Moore “did a very difficult job very well.”

What’s next 

Because of its prominence, the position of LAPD chief is one of the most coveted in law enforcement.

“The LAPD chief is a person that agencies nationwide and really worldwide look to,” said Emily Owens, professor of criminology at UC Irvine. She hopes the new chief of the department will take seriously identifying strategies that both reduce crime and end racial and other disparities in policing.

“That could be revolutionary,” Owens said.

Under the charter, people who want to be chief submit their applications to the city personnel department, which then forwards the names of at least six qualified candidates to the civilian police commission. That panel then provides the mayor with three candidates ranked in order of preference. The mayor can pick from those three or ask for more names.

Because the mayor appoints the police commission, she essentially picks the next chief.

Rice said candidates from around the country are already contacting her for information about the process and the department.

“The campaigns are on,” she said.

Moore told LAist he’s looking forward to moving on.

“I want to value the next 10, 20, 30 years — whatever God gives me — in my life and spend it with the people who have given me so much and supported me,” he said, referring to his wife and daughter.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors “undermined” the public’s trust when they granted themselves a 25% pay increase, according to the latest OC Grand Jury report released on Monday.

Since 2005, supervisors were set to make 80% of a Superior Court judge’s salary. That changed in June, when the board approved a 25% pay hike, increasing their salaries by about $49,000 to at least $244,000.

The pay increase raised eyebrows over the summer, sparking the Grand Jury investigation. A Grand Jury is a panel of citizens who investigate local government and public agencies. Members serve one year and look into several issues during that time.

It came just weeks after former Supervisor Andrew Do was sentenced to five years in federal prison for accepting more than $550,000 in bribes. The county itself is also financially in hot water following the Airport Fire, which has racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in damage claims against the county.

“The timing was especially troubling as the County of Orange (County) has been facing hiring freezes and budget constraints,” the Grand Jury reported. “This decision was not only tone-deaf — it reflected a deeper disconnect from the Board’s duty to serve the public with transparency and fiscal responsibility.”

What does the Grand Jury say? 

The Grand Jury questioned how the item was presented to the public and whether it was purposefully buried within the county budget agenda item.

“The Board added their salary increase into the $10.8 billion 2025-2026 Orange County Annual Budget adoption process. This resulted in a minimal description in the agenda and minimal opportunity for citizen input,” the Grand Jury reported. “Therefore, the Grand Jury investigated: why did they want to conceal their salary increase, was it warranted at this time and who initiated it?”

The board’s vote, the Grand Jury stated, signifies that the board prioritizes personal gain over accountability and public trust.

“Elected officials are entrusted to serve, not to enrich themselves. When this happens, the foundation of representative democracy is undermined,” the Grand Jury said. “The people of Orange County deserve better, and the people must demand it.”

How are officials responding? 

OC Supervisor Katrina Foley — the lone dissenting vote on the raises — said she was not surprised by the Grand Jury’s findings.

“I think most people felt that it was poor form for that to happen at that time, and given our current economic instability due to what's happening at the federal and the state level,” Foley told LAist.

Following the criticism, Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Doug Chaffee said they would donate their increased pay to charity.

“I am open to considering the recommendations in the report for changes to the pay ordinance and how future increases are approved, and I have been open to reconsidering the pay increase,” Sarmiento said in a statement.

A county spokesperson and Supervisor Don Wagner declined to comment. Supervisor Doug Chaffee and Janet Nguyen did not respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What’s next? 

The report made a handful of recommendations, including that the board rescind the pay raise and salary changes by next March “to restore institutional trust and demonstrate a genuine commitment to transparency and accountability.”

It also recommends that the board adopt procedures for proposing, reviewing and approving future supervisor salary changes that include public hearings.

The county has 90 days from the release of the report to respond to the Grand Jury, according to a county spokesperson.

The increase of federal immigration sweeps in Southern California this year made one thing clear to street vendors without authorization to be in the U.S. — running a business outside was risky.

In response, L.A. nonprofit Inclusive Action for the City ramped up an existing program that trains street vendors to work in private catering.

“One of the big successes of the year was the growth of our Hire a Vendor program, where our business coaches essentially became brokers for our street vendors and other entrepreneurs so they can get catering jobs,” said Rudy Espinoza, the group’s CEO.

The program was created in 2024 but the group expanded it this year after the increase of immigration sweeps. The group said in its annual report that 34 small businesses were trained for catering this year and more than 350 catering jobs came to those trainees this year.

The training program includes menu design and pricing, electronic sales systems and marketing

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Courtesy Inclusive Action for the City

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“Everywhere from the mayor's house to a small backyard party,” Espinoza said.

The group’s effort is part of actions taken by individuals and groups across the region to help people targeted for detention keep sources of income.

That help has included buyouts of daily inventory of fruit and flowers, as well as the awarding of grants to street vendors who lost income because they stayed home.

Advocates said the loss of income through detentions — many carried out through violent means — often affected family members who were U.S. citizens and has created a humanitarian crisis as families have lost the means to pay bills and buy food.

Street vendors in a Hire a Vendor session organized by Inclusive Action for the City.

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Courtesy Inclusive Action for the City

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The vendor training program sought to alleviate that.

“Sometimes, challenges force us to think, be creative and think about how to adapt,” Espinoza said. “The Hire a Vendor program is just an example of how some entrepreneurs really dedicated themselves to build out a different line of business for themselves.”

How it works

The Hire a Vendor program is free to people who seek and receive micro-loans from Inclusive Action for the City.

Four of the program’s nine sessions are "office hours" in which a business coach works one-on-one with the business owner.

The trainings cover:

• Catering basics such as delivery, set-up and presentation
• Invoicing and electronic sale systems
• Menu design and pricing
• Marketing through social media

The trained vendors are free to pursue their own catering jobs but also get catering work through a portal created by Inclusive Action for the City.

Espinoza said one full-time employee oversaw the program this year, and he’d like to add another full-time worker to expand the trainings in 2026.

The Trump administration will resume garnishing wages from student loan borrowers in default in early 2026, the U.S. Education Department confirmed to NPR.

The move comes after a years-long pause in wage garnishment due to the pandemic.

"We expect the first notices to be sent to approximately 1,000 defaulted borrowers the week of Jan. 7," a department spokesperson told NPR. The spokesperson said wage-garnishment notices are expected to increase on a monthly basis throughout the year.

A borrower is in default when they have not made loan payments in more than 270 days. Once that happens, the federal government can try to collect on the debt by seizing tax refunds and Social Security benefits and also by ordering an employer to withhold up to 15% of a borrower's pay. Borrowers should receive a 30-day notice from the Education Department before this wage garnishment begins.

Betsy Mayotte, the president and founder of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, says even though borrowers have expected this, the timing is unfortunate.

"It will coincide with the increase in health care costs for many of these defaulted borrowers," she said, referring to the premium increases for Affordable Care Act health insurance that kick in in 2026. "The two will almost certainly put significant economic strain on low- and middle-income borrowers."

About 5.5 million borrowers currently are in default, according to a recent analysis of the latest federal student loan data published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a public policy think tank.

Another 3.7 million are more than 270 days late on their payments and 2.7 million are in the early stages of delinquency.

"We've got about 12 million borrowers right now who are either delinquent on their loans or in default," Preston Cooper, who studies student loan policy at AEI, told NPR.

That's more than 1 in 4 federal student loan borrowers.

Cory Turner contributed to this story.

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