See/hear/speak no evil? Long Beach Mayor, City Council won’t talk about 60% jump in complaints against police

Since 2021, complaints against Long Beach Police Department officers have risen by over 60%. But records indicate that even after being asked about it repeatedly, Long Beach government officials have not made even a single inquiry.

In October the Long Beach Police Department released a report noting that violent crime within city limits has dropped 19% over the last 20 years — and Mayor Rex Richardson was eager to talk about it. “We’re having some real momentum on public safety right now,” he bragged to the Long Beach Press-Telegram within a month of the report’s release. “[…] Long Beach is, in fact, a city on the rise.”

But it’s a different story when the data casts the police in a questionable light. Six months earlier the LBPD had released a report showing that complaints against officers have risen more than 60% since 2021, including four straight years of double-digit increases — and Richardson won’t talk about that, nor will any of the nine city councilmembers. 

Moreover, they don’t seem to have any interest in the phenomenon. According to public records, not one of these ten Long Beach leaders has ever made a single inquiry of the police concerning the trend, despite the fact that all of them have been asked about it several times during the nine months since the report has been released.

Literally the only comment on record concerning the LBPD’s 2024 Annual Year in Review and Accountability Report, which documents the rise in complaints, was a three-word reply by 3rd District Councilmember Kristina Duggan upon receipt: “This looks interesting.”

Duggan’s office is also the only one who made any reply to Random Lengths News repeated questions about why there have been no inquiries about the rising complaints, or whether there could be any increase — 600%, 6,000% — that would be concerning enough to ask the LBPD about: “Councilmember Duggan won’t have a comment on this,” said Nick Kaspar, her chief of staff.

To ensure that the mayor and councilmembers could not claim they were not personally made aware of these inquiries (because their staff did not pass them along, etc.), at the September 2 city council meeting, with the mayor and full council present, during open public comment I noted the increase, and before my time expired I directly asked Mayor Richardson and Councilmember Mary Zendejas (in whose district I reside) for comment: both remained silent. 

One person who did have something to say in response to my appearance was LBPD Chief Hebeish, who sent a September 4 e-mail to the mayor and councilmembers, et al., with the subject line “CHIEF’S ALERT – City Council Meeting Public Comment,” wherein he reviewed comments provided to me by the LBPD back in May when I queried about the rise in complaints, as well as the 29% jump in use-of-force incidents between 2023 and 2024. Nothing in either Hebeish’s e-mail or the LBPD’s response to me (part of which I quote verbatim in a July 2025 article) addresses the rise in complaints. 

Unlike the decrease in violent crime about which Richardson was happy to comment, the increase in complaints against LBPD officers is not part of a national or regional trend. For example, during the same four-year time period in which complaints against LBPD rose by over 60%, complaints against Los Angeles Police Department officers dropped by approximately 7.5%.

Why is Long Beach different? “We face the very same challenges every major city faces,” Richardson told the Press-Telegram, “but we address them.”

Considering their silence on the trend of rising complaints about police behavior, the irony is tough to miss.

(*Note: In the concluding moments of the video I misspeak by saying that the > 60% increase was in use-of-force complaints, though throughout the rest of the video I make clear that I was talking only about complaints in general.)