A Majority of LBPD Sworn Officers Live Outside Long Beach. Only 18.5% Reside in the City, One Lives in Texas. *With Maps, Lots of Maps.

Using the California Public Records Act, CheckLBPD obtained a list of the city and zip code of all LBPD officers.  The records show only 18.5% of LBPD officers live in the Long Beach city limits—with officers that do live in Long Beach heavily favoring East Long Beach over the West Side.

LBPD officers live in 191 different zip codes—covering Long Beach and 116 other cities.  The list produced by the LBPD has 783 total zip codes, but only 145 of them are Long Beach zip codes.  While California law prohibits discriminating against candidates based on city of residence, the data does indicate the department could do a better job of trying to recruit locally.

One LBPD officer lists his home address as Winnsboro, Texas—which raises questions about his ability to be called out for emergencies.

Police officers living outside the state they police is not unheard of in Southern California.  The L.A. TACO recently reported that over two dozen LAPD officers live out-of-state.  When the L.A. TACO reached LAPD Chief Moore for comment he said, “We will need to research this further to understand who these individuals are and their assignment. I do believe an LAPD officer living out of state would pose significant logistical issues of their ability to meet the demands of our work in Los Angeles.”

The LBPD also produced a list of all employees zip codes.  When you subtract the sworn officers from this list, you are left with 309 employees—with 124 of them located in Long Beach.  That means 40% of non-sworn employees are Long Beach residents; that percentage drops by more than half for sworn officers.

There is a long narrative of city police being seen as an outside occupying force—these numbers do not dispel that notion.  Increasing the number of people from the community that serve as LBPD officers would show the department's recent public statements about "community policing" are more than lip service.

The LBPD's past policies (like the random K-9 drug sweeps of public school classrooms that I was subjected to in the late 90's) could not have helped their local recruitment efforts.  CheckLBPD will be filing future public record requests to find out more about LBPD cadet recruitment.

This data is also relevant to discussions regarding the City's new Covid-19 vaccine mandate, which is not supported by the LBPOA and is being challenged in court by individual LBPD officers.  This is deadly relevant as the LBPD vaccination rate remains unchanged at 51% since July—while Covid-19 has become the #1 killer of cops in 2021.

Public Safety employees have more in-person contact with the public than any other City employees.  Their jobs require it.  When the Police and Fire Departments refuse the vaccine it is not just a personal choice—it puts everyone they come into contact with at risk.  Hopefully this data will be of useful in the ongoing public health debate.