LA police campaigned against Karen Bass. Now she wants to give them a raise.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles police union spent millions of dollars trying to quash Karen Bass’ mayoral bid. It’s a different story now, halfway into her first year in office.

In the span of a few months, Bass has called for adding hundreds of officers to the Los Angeles Police Department and boosted their pay with a new contract deal she struck with the union.

The moves may seem unexpected for a bona fide progressive such as Bass, the first Black woman to run Los Angeles, and have frustrated allies who want a tougher line with police following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. The former congresswoman had a leading role in the Democratic Party’s police reform efforts, making her embrace of a long-troubled department even more disappointing for activists.

All this points to a delicate balancing act with stakes that could echo through national politics. For Bass — and other big-city mayors like New York’s Eric Adams dealing with intense public anxiety about crime — the challenge is maintaining her credibility as a reformer while appearing in touch with voters’ fears about public safety.

“As Democrats, we have to be unequivocal when it comes to crime,” Bass said in an interview. “You know the joke — we speak in paragraphs. Democrats spend a lot of time trying to explain and analyze crime, which sends a signal that they're not as concerned about it.”

Violent crime in the city is down from last year and property crime is flat. But residents’ perceptions do not always align with the numbers, and high-profile incidents such as recent flash mob smash-and-grabs at luxury stores in Los Angeles feed widespread anxiety. Even Bass has had her own brush with crime. Burglars broke into her home last fall while she was away, stealing handguns; two people have been convicted on charges including burglary.

Bass, who plans to address the smash-and-grabs in a news conference Thursday, said it should come as no surprise that she’s been willing to plow money into policing. Indeed, there was not much daylight between Bass and her main rival, the billionaire developer Rick Caruso, during the mayoral campaign. Both called for bolstering police staffing, adding gang intervention workers and sending unarmed responders on calls involving the mentally ill.

But, Bass, a former community activist, also promised to ensure tougher accountability for police shootings and a public health approach to preventing violence.

“What I said in the campaign — and what I believe in is not anything new — is that if a crime happens, it needs to be dealt with and the person needs to be accountable,” she said. “But where I want to put a lot of my efforts is into preventing crime.”

Bass has been particularly forceful in disassociating herself with the movement to defund the police, which she once described as “one of the worst slogans ever.”

Nevertheless, the Los Angeles Protective Police League, the union representing rank-and-file officers, sided decisively with Caruso in the primary, spending nearly $3.5 million against Bass.

Union leadership met with Bass after she took office to smooth over any frayed feelings from the campaign. They found common cause in stopping the plunge in Los Angeles’ officer ranks. The LAPD has just dipped below 9,000 officers, according to the department, marking a two-decade low in staffing.

“When the number of officers drops so low, then you're really talking about morale, you're talking about tremendous overtime, and all of that compromises Angelenos feeling safe,” Bass said. “Because you're not going to be in your best performance if you feel overworked, if you're demoralized and you don't have the support that you need.”

Her budget this year set aside $3.2 billion for the LAPD, which included hiring more officers to reach her stated goal of a 9,500-member police force.

“She very easily could’ve said, ‘We’re not going to get there. Why encumber that money? Let’s spend it on something else.’ And she didn’t,” said Tom Saggau, spokesperson for the police union LAPPL. “We felt right then and there we would be able to work on shared goals.”

Months later, she struck a contract deal with LAPPL which includes a nearly 13 percent pay hike for new recruits and yearly increases of 3 percent to officers’ base wages over four years. Members ratified the agreement last week, Saggau said.

The contract must get final approval from the City Council, which is expected to vote on the proposal in the coming weeks. The prospects for passage look strong, with both the mayor and council leadership on board.

Still, the agreement drew condemnation from progressives.

“While real workers and real unions are fighting for just wages that can allow us to pay rent in a city like Los Angeles, it speaks volumes that LAPPL just waltzes in and says this is what we want and they’re given that,” said Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter – Los Angeles.

The mayor acknowledged a “respectful difference of opinion” with those on her left flank.

“Where we have unity is on the need, the commitment and the desire to increase funding in prevention efforts,” she said.

Her spending plan created a new Office of Community Safety, which will focus on prevention efforts, and put $56 million toward community safety efforts such as gang intervention programs — a paltry figure compared to the police department’s nearly $2 billion operating budget, which progressives say Bass’ shows balanced approach has so far been lopsided.

“This office is just beginning,” she said. “So it was not necessary to front load it with hundreds of millions of dollars that we really wouldn't have the capacity to use.”

The contract is the latest in a string of disappointments for progressives, who unsuccessfully pushed Bass at the start of her term to seek a new LAPD police chief and opposed her budget boosting the number of cops.

“The door has been open, the conversations are there. That’s a necessary initial step,” Abdullah said.” But we haven’t been able to influence her.”