By Cece Woods
Nithya Raman wants LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell gone if she becomes mayor of Los Angeles. But the timing and circumstances surrounding her demand for new leadership raise a far more serious question than whether an incoming mayor simply wants her own person running the police department: Does Raman want to remove a police chief who has already demonstrated that he will refuse political pressure to interfere with federal law-enforcement operations?
That question isn’t hypothetical.
On June 10, 2025, Councilwoman Imelda Padilla pressed McDonnell during a Los Angeles City Council meeting about whether LAPD could provide elected officials advance notification of federal immigration enforcement operations occurring in their districts. McDonnell stopped Padilla and made sure he understood what she was asking. Was she asking LAPD to notify her before another law-enforcement agency conducted an operation?
Padilla answered, “Yeah.”
McDonnell then explained exactly why he wouldn’t do it. Providing advance warning of another law-enforcement agency’s operation, he told Padilla, would constitute “obstruction of justice.” He subsequently described such conduct as completely inappropriate and illegal.
The extraordinary exchange might have disappeared into hours of government video had The Current Report not pulled the footage and exposed it publicly. On June 12, 2025, I posted the exchange on X through @cecewoodsmedia. The video exploded, generating close to one million views and putting an extraordinary moment inside Los Angeles City Hall directly in front of the public: an elected councilwoman asking LAPD’s chief about advance warning of federal enforcement activity and the chief telling her that what she was requesting could constitute obstruction of justice.
Raman was participating in that June 10 City Council meeting. There is no evidence in the public record reviewed by The Current Report establishing that Raman joined Padilla in making that specific request. But what happened in that chamber becomes extremely relevant now because Raman is no longer merely another councilmember sitting alongside Padilla. She is running for mayor, has made opposition to federal immigration enforcement a central part of her campaign and has publicly declared that McDonnell will be replaced because, in her words, he has failed to “meet this moment.”
The obvious question is what Raman believes McDonnell should have done differently.
If McDonnell’s refusal to cross the line he described as obstruction of justice represents a failure to “meet this moment,” voters need to know where Raman believes that line should be drawn — and what she expects from the police chief she intends to appoint in his place.
That question becomes even more consequential with former Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón being identified as a potential replacement for McDonnell. Gascón, whose progressive criminal-justice policies generated years of controversy before Los Angeles County voters overwhelmingly removed him from office in 2024, would return to enormous law-enforcement authority not through an election, but through an appointment by Raman.
The emerging picture therefore demands scrutiny well beyond ordinary mayoral politics. Los Angeles has a sitting police chief who publicly refused a request from a councilmember because he said complying could constitute obstruction of justice. The candidate seeking to become his boss says he hasn’t “met this moment” and intends to replace him. That same candidate has made resistance to federal immigration enforcement a centerpiece of her public-safety message, while the name of one of the most controversial progressive law-enforcement officials in Los Angeles history is being raised as McDonnell’s possible successor.
The question isn’t simply why Raman wants Jim McDonnell gone. The question is what she wants his replacement to be willing to do that McDonnell refused to do.
