Violent Crime Up in Los Angeles 9 Percent

Violent crime in Los Angeles is up 9 percent compared with the same time last year, even as overall crime fell 3 percent, police Chief Charlie Beck said today.

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With two months left in the year, the number of homicides climbed 4.5 percent, and aggravated assaults are up 20 percent, according to the latest crime statistics given to the Police Commission.

The mid-year crime statistics released in July had the violent crime rate up by 2.9 percent, with aggravated assaults up 12 percent, while overall crime were down 5.4 percent.

Beck said the violent crime rate is driven mostly by aggravated assaults, which in turn could be driven by the number of domestic violence crimes.

Beck said the department is looking “very carefully” at the latest number of reported rapes, which is up 12 percent from 2013 and down “just 1 percent” compared with 2012.

“We don’t see any serials or patterns at this particular point,” but he noted that last year”was a particularly good year,” he said.

Overall property crime fell 6 percent, and gang crime is down 8.2 percent, Beck said.

Over traffic collisions are up 3.2 percent, but some improvement was seen in a 2 percent decrease in hit-and-run crimes, with fatalities down 10 percent and serious injury down 38 percent, Beck said.

Cases of police using force dropped 26 percent to 61, from 83 in 2013, while police shootings were down 37 percent, from 37 cases last year to 23, which Beck said is the “lowest in the past 5 years,” Beck said.

The department currently has 9,918 sworn and 2,730 civilian employees.

--City News Service

PHOTO Patch file photo.