LOS ANGELES — Two days after her surprise entry into the Los Angeles mayor's race, Nithya Raman staked out her position on public safety, saying she doesn't want the Police Department to lose more officers.

"We need to maintain the size of our police force and grapple with the fact that even the size of our existing police force is not enough to respond to 911 calls in a timely fashion," she said Monday in an interview with NBC Los Angeles.

Raman's statements represent a considerable evolution from 2020, when she became the first person elected to the City Council with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America. "Defund the police," she declared at one point during her campaign.

As a city council member, Raman has navigated a tightrope on the issue, responding to the wishes of her DSA supporters but also other constituents concerned about crime.

Just three weeks ago, she voted against the hiring of 170 additional police officers sought by Mayor Karen Bass, a former ally who is now her opponent in the June 2 primary.

"I've voted for police budgets when they have maintained appropriate levels of investment and are fiscally responsible, and that's what I would continue to do as Mayor," Raman said Wednesday in a statement to The Times.

A Bass campaign spokesperson criticized Raman over her statements in the NBC interview, saying her vote against police hiring last month would have caused the LAPD's ranks to decrease even more.

"This is what typical politicians do; they say one thing while doing another," said the spokesperson, Douglas Herman. "Nithya Raman's record clearly shows that she's not making the city safer."

Raman has been focused on the issue of public safety since her first council campaign. In a 14,000-word platform, she advocated for the LAPD to be transformed into a "much smaller, specialized armed force," with responsibility for traffic enforcement, car crashes and nonviolent mental health crises shifted to other agencies.

Now, as a mayoral candidate, Raman appears to be offering more centrist views as she courts voters in a citywide race.

When NBC4's Conan Nolan asked if public safety — police and fire — should be the city's top priority, she said, "Absolutely."

"If people don't feel safe in Los Angeles, they are not going to live in Los Angeles. They're not going to invest in Los Angeles. They're not going to work in Los Angeles," she said. "You have to make sure that safety is the backbone of this city."

Raman's latest remarks frustrated some who have considered her an ally.

"What we're hearing is a betrayal of her stated values," said Melina Abdullah, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, which supports abolishing the police department. "Both she and Bass are running to the middle."

Raman joined the council's other three DSA-backed members in opposing last month's plan for additional police hiring, which passed 9-4. When the issue first came up in December, she said the hiring would put new pressure on city finances, potentially forcing cuts in other services.

Bass and Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the additional hires were needed to keep the department from contracting further as the city prepares for major global events including the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Even with the additional recruits, the LAPD will shrink over the course of this fiscal year, as more officers leave the department than are hired.

When Raman first ran for council in 2020, she didn't specify how large she thought the LAPD should be. (At the time, the department had about 10,000 sworn members.) However, she argued that a smaller police force would reduce the potential for violent encounters between cops and civilians.

That year, the council cut LAPD hiring by about 250 officers in response to protests over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In the years that followed, hiring continued to plummet.

In 2021, Raman tried without success to lower then-Mayor Eric Garcetti's police hiring goal, signing a proposal from then-Councilmember Mike Bonin to reduce it by 300 officers. After that effort failed, she voted for Garcetti's budget, which increased police spending by 3%.

Raman also voted for the budget in 2022, when the council scaled back Garcetti's police hiring plan, calling it unrealistic.

The following year, Raman opposed a package of police raises backed by Bass, which provided the rank-and-file with higher starting salaries and new retention bonuses. That contract, reached with the powerful police union, was aimed at encouraging more officers to join the force.

Critics said the contract would add about $400 million per year to the city budget by 2027.

"My analysis was that [the contract] would not increase recruitment and that it would bankrupt the city," Raman said last year at a community meeting in Encino.

In 2024, Raman voted against Bass' city budget — the first since the package of police raises went into effect. Raman has long called for the city to spend money on alternatives to law enforcement, such as street medicine teams, new homeless shelters and gang intervention programs.

"LAPD staff shortages don't have to mean longer emergency response times," she wrote on social media in 2023.

Asked about Raman's recent remarks, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, said: "Her shameless attempt to rewrite her abysmal record on protecting Angelenos should tell voters about the type of person she actually is."

During Monday's NBC interview, Raman said the city should continue pursuing less expensive ways of responding to 911 calls, including "unarmed officers, unarmed personnel responding to calls for which you don't need armed personnel response."

Raman also focused on response times, saying that 911 callers should not be placed on hold for an hour. The LAPD, she said, does not have enough officers to always respond quickly.

"This is a huge problem," she said. "When you call for help in the city and someone doesn't come to help you, or says 'I can't help you,' you feel a loss of faith in Los Angeles that is profound, and I think we have to respond to that."

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who voted last month for Bass' police hiring proposal, said Raman's latest comments on maintaining LAPD staffing don't match her voting history.

"This is a political moment for her to pretend that she's showing up as an advocate, when her actions are quite the opposite," Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said the council approved the package of police raises, which included retention bonuses and higher starting salaries, to improve police recruitment by getting closer to what surrounding agencies offer.

"We were at a competitive disadvantage," she said.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said in December that Bass achieved a remarkable turnaround in police hiring, cutting through government bureaucracy that slowed down the process for bringing on new officers.

After taking office in 2022, Bass said she wanted to increase the size of the LAPD, taking it back to 9,500 officers. The number of LAPD recruits has gone up each year of her tenure, according to numbers from the mayor's team.

The department now has a little more than 8,700 sworn officers, according to figures provided last week to the Board of Police Commissioners. That's an increase from last fall, when sworn staffing had fallen to 8,646.

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—Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

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