LAPD Chief Michel Moore has made the decision to retire after 42 years.
In his first one-on-one interview since announcing his retirement, Moore put the rumors he was pressured into leaving the LAPD to rest.
“The city is filled with rumors. It's a big city, it's a big government, and people are always speculating and conjecture and wondering,” Moore told NBC4.
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Moore said he is building a house in Tennessee and he and his wife will soon be moving there to be closer to his daughter. He made the decision to step down during the Christmas holidays.
“I said 2024 is the year,” Moore said. “The two most important people in my life, my wife and my daughter, they've given a lot for me to do this. It's time to say, ‘Okay, I've been selfish enough.’”
Before he bids goodbye, Moore assesses the department he’s led for more than five years, calling it, “What I think is the greatest police organization in America…we don’t always get it right and when we mess up, we’re going to fess up…We have embarrassed ourselves. I have had some senior staff of this organization, no secrets that have committed some misdeeds that I think are reflective of their failures and not of the system.”
Appointed in 2018 by then Mayor Eric Garcetti, Moore admits to his own mistakes, revealing to NBC4 the one he regrets the most. It happened during the 2020 mass protests over the death of George Floyd.
“We were seeing officers who were hit by bricks…officers with broken legs, fractured skulls. And I was upset and angered. And I made a comparison of those hooligans that were out committing that violence to the murder of George Floyd…and I made my apologies. And there are those who understood that it wasn't what was in my heart.”
NBC4 was there in 2020 when Chief Moore took a knee in solidarity with protestors outside of LAPD Headquarters. But apologies from Moore to protestors who gathered were not accepted back then and some still may not forgive him for the comments to this day.
When Moore announced his retirement on Jan. 12, Black Lives Matter LA took to social media with the hashtag to 135,000 followers, #NoMoreMoore, “Fired by the People!”
While Moore says the LAPD is currently under “a great deal of stress” and needs to “increase our ranks,” he is hoping to be remembered, “as a purveyor of hope.”
When it comes to selecting his successor, he said he “Would hope, as when I was aspiring for this position the two earlier times, is that the city would look inside first, and then, if needed, then it can always consider the outsiders.”
As far as his final thoughts to LAPD’S rank-and-file, Moore said “That I've done my best, that I believe in them. They make me proud, and I'm grateful for their lives of service and dedication, and I challenge them to continue.”
Chief Michel Moore’s also had a message to the residents of the city he’s served for over four decades:
“To people of Los Angeles, I hope I was enough and at the same time, know that I'm leaving a department in better hands, in a better place than I found it, and that they can have confidence that the men and women that are out there are out there for them, and they're out there to do their very best. Give them a nod, give them a wave. Let them know you care for them, that they matter to you. There's nothing that fills a cop's heart more than to know just that.”
Moore steps down at the end of February and then will assist with the transition to an interim chief.
