L.A. Crime Statistics - January to June 2007
 
By Walter Moore, Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, Walter Moore For Mayor.com
 
During yesterday’s photo-op, Mayor Villaraigosa announced that various categories of crime were down in the City of L.A. by various percentages in the first six months of 2007.  You were supposed to be impressed, and attribute the reduction to him.
 
 
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
In fact, however, crime was down in cities throughout Southern California.  For example, in San Bernardino County, murder was down 23%; Orange County, it was down 20%.  Hence, the reduction may be due less to Villaraigosa, and more to other factors, e.g., the state’s three-strikes law keeping career criminals off the streets, or ER doctors preventing gun-shot victims from turning into murder victims.
 
Also, before you start feeling terribly safe, you need to consider what Villaraigosa did not mention, namely,  the actual numbers of crimes committed in the City of Los Angeles during the past six months -- not the past year, mind you, but just the past six months:
 
  1. • Murders - 194
  2. • Shooting Victims - 999
  3. • Rapes - 397
  4. • Robberies - 6619
  5. • Aggravated Assaults - 6643
  6. • Burglaries - 9901
  7. • Burglary Theft From Vehicle - 15,917
  8. • Grand Theft Auto - 12,150
 
Do those actual numbers make you feel as though crime is under control? Me, neither.  Those figures work out to more than:  one murder per day, five shootings per day, two rapes per day, 36 robberies per day, 54 burglaries per day, and 66 cars stolen per day.
 
The City of L.A. currently has just 9,511 LAPD officers, which is 200 fewer than we had in 1997, when we had 9720 officers. The number of gang members, by contrast, is estimated to be 39,000.
 
We need far more police, and we need them now.  It’s not fair to our citizens, or to the police themselves, to squander money on various idiotic programs (e.g., $178 million per year to the likes of “Big Weasel”) when we have nearly 1000 people shot every six months, and 12,000 cars stolen every six months.
 
As per my platform, I will make hiring enough police the No. 1 budget priority.  We will fully fund the  LAPD before allocating funds to any other department.  If that seems like the right way to run a city, please click here to contribute to the Committee to Elect Walter Moore.