Long Beach Police Chief Wally Hebeish is set to retire on Dec. 31, 2026, closing out nearly five years at the helm of the second largest police department in Los Angeles County. His departure sets off a nationwide search for a successor just as the department grapples with proposed budget reductions and staffing cuts heading into next year.
The Long Beach Police Department announced that Hebeish will step down at the end of the year, according to NBC4 Los Angeles. Hebeish began leading the department in December 2021 and was formally appointed chief that year, succeeding Robert Luna, who went on to become L.A. County Sheriff after serving as Long Beach police chief.
Hebeish's path to the city's top law enforcement job started well before his appointment. He began his law enforcement career with the Orange County Sheriff's Department before joining the Long Beach Police Department in 1995, and he served as assistant police chief under Luna for roughly two years before taking over the top job, according to the Press-Telegram. He officially became chief on Jan. 1, 2022, after his appointment was announced that Dec. 22.
A Nationwide Search Begins
With Hebeish's exit confirmed, the Long Beach city manager will conduct a nationwide recruitment process to identify candidates from both inside and outside the department, city officials said, per the NBC4 Los Angeles report. The city manager will ultimately make the final call on who takes over, and officials hope to announce the next chief in early 2027, though the selection process may take several months.
Community members will get a chance to weigh in on what they want to see in the department's next leader. That mirrors the process that led to Hebeish's own hiring, when the city conducted what the Press-Telegram described as a rigorous national search informed by a survey of Long Beach residents asking what qualifications they wanted in the next police chief. The current search is expected to again include multi-step screening, meetings with city department directors, and interviews with community and technical panels, per the same NBC4 Los Angeles report.
Hebeish said serving the Long Beach community as police chief was an honor, adding that he was grateful for the support and trust he received during his tenure, according to NBC4 Los Angeles.
Budget Pressures Shape the Handoff
The transition comes as the department works through a tightened fiscal picture. LBPD's proposed fiscal-year 2026-27 budget requests roughly $344 million, but Hebeish said the department was asked to make about $19.3 million in cuts, including eliminating 63.47 full-time-equivalent positions and slashing overtime funding by 25%, according to the Press-Telegram. The same report notes the department fielded more than 187,000 calls for service over the previous year, averaging about 512 calls daily.
Despite the cuts, crime trends have moved in a positive direction. Overall crime fell 17.4% in 2025 compared with the prior year, with murders down 23.7%, shootings down 36% and violent crime down 9.2%, the Press-Telegram reported. The proposed budget also sets aside one-time funding to replace an aging Air Support Unit helicopter and to fund a new recruit academy class ahead of the 2028 Olympics.
Not every line item survived the budget squeeze. According to the Signal Tribune, the department's Quality of Life team is slated to lose four officers, cutting that unit's staffing in half, and the overtime budget would shrink by $2.68 million. Hebeish said the department's priority throughout the cuts was preserving its roughly 5.6-minute response time for priority-one emergency calls, though he acknowledged the overtime reduction would affect investigations into some crimes, including property damage, per the Signal Tribune's reporting.
