As California Spends Hundreds of Millions on the Death Penalty, Los Angeles Can’t Afford Homicide Investigations

In California, a state that is spend­ing $137 mil­lion per year on the death penal­ty, many homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tions have been put on hold due to a bud­get cri­sis in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is forc­ing offi­cers to sus­pend work on their cas­es and take days or weeks off because of new over­time lim­its. One of the LAPD’s most pro­duc­tive inves­ti­ga­tors sat idle for 6 weeks, unable to fol­low old leads or to pick up on new ones because he had accu­mu­lat­ed over­time on cas­es. Homicide detec­tives have espe­cial­ly demand­ing work sched­ules that rou­tine­ly require them to inves­ti­gate a case through the nights and week­ends. ​“The hours have to come from some place,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said. ​“It has a seri­ous impact on our abil­i­ty to respond to some of the large, vio­lent inci­dents we’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing late­ly. That is espe­cial­ly true of homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tions because of the long hours they demand.” In one region, Southeast L.A., 9 of the 14 killings this year remain unsolved. ​“That is hor­ri­ble com­pared to our typ­i­cal rates,” said Det. Sal LaBarbera, a 24-year homi­cide vet­er­an who super­vis­es the Southeast squad. ​“All of those cas­es are solv­able. None of them are mys­ter­ies. A few of them would like­ly already be solved, if I could just let my guys loose to work.”

Other police units in L.A. have also exceed­ed their over­time lim­its and are hav­ing to cut back on patrols. Specialized assign­ments like SWAT teams, canine and bomb units, and anti-gang offi­cers will like­ly have to cur­tail their hours. In March, the num­ber of hours that offi­cers had to take off was equiv­a­lent to remov­ing 290 offi­cers from the police force. 

(See Rubin, J., ​“Investigations sit idle as LAPD detec­tives hit over­time caps,” Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2010; death penal­ty infor­ma­tion is from DPIC). See Costs.

California has the largest death row in the coun­try and needs a new facil­i­ty that may cost anoth­er $400 mil­lion, on top of the year­ly costs of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Los Angeles County had the most death sen­tences in the coun­try in 2009.