Mayor defends police hiring

Escalating a dispute over police hiring, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said any cuts in his goal to expand the Los Angeles Police Department "will come over my dead body Daily News.

"I cannot overstate the importance of fully implementing the city's police hiring plan to build the Los Angeles Police Department to 10,000 strong," Villaraigosa wrote in a letter to City Councilman Bernard Parks, who chairs the council's Budget and Finance Committee.

"I will veto any effort to place an arbitrary cap on police hiring."