I studied Los Angeles history of city planning and urbanism in university, as a minor (not that makes me an expert by any means, of course, but I'm no stranger to LA, plus I've lived here for 6 years) – it's a special city, yes, but it's not fundamentally different from most other large cities in the US, including my hometown, Dallas, so much as just further along the same growth pattern (sprawl and then densification) as most sunbelt cities such as Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, San Diego, and Salt Lake City. (And as far as "stupid geographic boundaries", please see Houston or even San Diego). We could argue about this greater point all day, but nothing makes LA fundamentally special from a city-planning point of view, though it is in my heart :'-)
Regardless, as far as policing goes, NYC's 5 borough/county/city system is _much_ more complicated, which proponents might say justifies their (imo insane) $6 Billion(!) annual budget allocation, but if you compare that to NYC's $34 Billion [1] education budget, it looks a little more reasonable than LA's $3 Billion LAPD budget compared to LAUSD's $7 Billion [2] education budget.
[1] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/about-us/funding/funding-our-sch...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Unified_School_Dis...