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No, Violent Crime Is Not Up in Los Angeles

Published on 40 Comments on No, Violent Crime Is Not Up in Los Angeles

The New York Times says that the LA police department is ramping up patrols:

All of this necessary, some city leaders believe, because violent crime is up sharply — last year murders were up 36 percent in L.A. — and the city is awash in new guns....“We’ve lost more than a decade of progress,” Chief Michel Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department said in an interview, referring to the significant drops in crime in the years before the pandemic.

I am so tired of this crap. How hard is it for reporters to look up the latest crime data?

Homicide is up in Los Angeles, as it is in many large cities. This is a serious problem and its roots are not well understood—nor is it something to be played down. But violent crime more generally? In 2020 it was down 2% over the previous year. Property crime was down 10%.

If you're concerned about being caught in the middle of a gang war, then Los Angeles is a little less safe than it was a year ago. But that's not a real danger for most people. If you're truly concerned about your overall personal safety, then violent crime is the stat to look at. On that score, Los Angeles is safer than it was pre-pandemic.

40 thoughts on “No, Violent Crime Is Not Up in Los Angeles”

  1. bbleh

    Kevin, you are contravening The Narrative and that simply is not done.

    National focus groups show clearly that the coveted Frightened Rabbit demographic firmly wants to believe that violent crime is increasing in major cities, they enjoy hearing that it is -- both because it reinforces their biases and because it gives them a little frisson of fear without really making them afraid of anything tangible -- and those increase viewership which sells advertising.

    That's the business case, and that's what matters in newsertainment. So shut it, pal.

  2. ey81

    It sounds like Kevin is saying that the LA situation is just black people killing other black people, no cause for concern for the rest of us real Americans?

        2. iamr4man

          Kind of depends on how you define “white”.
          Benjamin’s Franklin didn’t consider Germans to be “white” for instance.
          Also depends on what you mean by “gang”. Do you mean neighborhood street gang? Lots of those in Los Angeles when I lived/worked there (I worked in juvenile hall and most of the black and Latino kids locked up there were members of neighborhood gangs). MS 13 is more like a place of birth affinity gang, isn’t it? Like the Mafia, Yakuza, or Russian gangs. Do you consider the Mafia to be “white”? What about MS 13? Hell’s Angels?

          1. Mitchell Young

            LOL. Of course Franklin considered Germans white. He considered them an alien presence (which they were!) but he didn't think they were Negroes.

            Stop uncritically imbibing Foner and Zinn and Ignatiev.

          2. iamr4man

            “Of course Franklin considered Germans white”:

            “Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.”
            https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/02/swarthy-germans/48324/

          3. Mitchell Young

            Well, actually zero percent of any population is white, including albinos. This stuff is just silly...white is shorthand for Caucasian, particularly European descended Caucasian. The line between a hill and a mountain is fuzzy, but we know that Kilimanjaro is the later and Little Round Top is the former.

  3. Midgard

    The foundation of western civilization is the banking sector. Or the medium of wealth generated to keep the sheep at bay. Everything from the "nuclear family" to " legal rights" was a creation enforced by the state, driven morally by Christendom so this expansion of debt, capital ponzi scheme could stay a float and not revert into tribalism. Socialism rejects this. It rejects the emasculated premise from where it came from. Makes fun of the wimps it creates. With Socialism, women are cattle. Real men don't take procession, but enforce their natural strengths on the tribe.

    This is the black man. "Degenerated" the most out of the 3 main cultures. Live the most tribal. Funny that Liberals attack contards as Tribalists when nothing further from the truth is real. Hypocritical emasculated wimps, but Tribalism.......no. Bourgeois morality is not nearly as great as they hope, not nearly as masculine as they want. For Blacks, the criminal underworld is great for men: power, women, guns. BLM's of the world are created to defend the culture.

      1. Jasper_in_Boston

        Why should Kevin spend time/money on a new commenting system when a free solution (ignoring trolls) is available?

  5. James B. Shearer

    It isn't just homicide.

    "In the first two months of this year, Los Angeles Police Department officers fielded 570 reports of shots fired, up 88% from the 303 incidents during same time frame in 2020 -- and 267 people were hit by gunfire, a 141% increase from the 111 people wounded in the time frame in 2020, it was reported Thursday."

  6. Jasper_in_Boston

    I am so tired of this crap. How hard is it for reporters to look up the latest crime data?

    That would require a modicum of numeracy or familiarity with statistics, Kevin. Which is something apparently not taught at the fancy schools that produce journalists for the likes of NY Times, WaPo, etc (and in fairness, LA Times, too, most likely).

    Just a nit to pick, though, a 36% increase in murder is a pretty scary jump (obviously not confined only to LA). Isn't is possible that really is a story of bigger import than the "decrease" in violent crime? I use scare quotes because it seems to me at least possible, especially given the minute (2%) decrease, that this is statistical noise or an artefact of the pandemic. I mean, bars were closed, for instance, and I'd bet a healthy percentage of indictable violent crimes in LA flows from drinkers out at night; if I'm right, this doesn't really mean people are more safe as such except to the extent they're no longer engaging in that statistically somewhat risky behavior known as "night life.

    1. hobbes1701

      "Just a nit to pick, though, a 36% increase in murder is a pretty scary jump"

      I'd tend to agree. The increase over the last year is visually reduced in Kevin's graph by the absolutely outrageous levels of crime in the early 90s.

  7. hobbes1701

    "Just a nit to pick, though, a 36% increase in murder is a pretty scary jump"

    I'd tend to agree. The increase over the last year is visually reduced in Kevin's graph by the absolutely outrageous levels of crime in the early 90s.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      Well, the thing is, those of us who follow the issue of crime have had it hammered into our heads over the years that "you can't fake a body" and that, therefore, murder statistics are a cleaner, less noisy, more reliable indicator of violent crime than general violent crime statistics. So a more or less level rate of overall violent crime paired with a big jump in murder makes me think the "LA is safer" conclusion at minimum is pretty questionable. That doesn't change the poor reportage and inaccuracy on the part of the NY Times reporters that Kevin is writing about here, of course. (And again, Los Angeles is hardly alone in seeing a big spike in homicide).

  8. Mitchell Young

    Homicide is the real crime indicator. It is fairly hard to write off a dead body (though there are ways at the margins). Most 'violent' crime is assault/aggravated assault. These aren't really serious crimes, and in times when more serious crimes are increasing are likely to be underreported. As it is, just plain shootings are up bigly this year in Los Angeles.

    https://abc7.com/los-angeles-shootings-crime-la-homicide/10391530/

  9. Traveller

    Being a Political Beast...admittedly so...Kevin may entirely correct in saying Crime is flat or down is not...so much even the issue...the question is...Who controls the narrative?

    If it is the Republican's, then Dems are soft on crime and letting criminals run rampant and free in the streets....(actually I am strongly in favor of the restoration of felon rights and their reintegration back into society...but this is just a morally correct position, we're talking important stuff...Politics).

    Given the absolutes of the above, Dems need to find a solid middle ground...more than graphs and the truth.

    Just sayin` Traveller

    1. Midgard

      Your point is dead. Crime has risen in Republican run states. Look at Tennessee's mess. Republicans are getting hammered for giving the black man guns.

  10. Justin

    Let's pretend for the moment that violent crime is, in fact, up. Certainly shootings are getting lots of media play. The police are powerless to stop these kinds of crimes. Random shootings at house parties or drive bys have never been prevented by police. Show me that data. Show me that plan.

    There isn't a plan. Thugs want to be thugs and no amount of punishment or aggressive policing will change that. It's a cultural thing by now because there are mass shootings all the time now. The police are useless.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/24/us/us-mass-shootings-this-weekend/index.html

  11. cephalopod

    The thing is, people care a lot more about the murder rate than the rates for most other violent crimes.

    Perhaps crime statistics should be weighted by human emotional response, so that discussions of crime rates reflect how people actually feel about them.

    I know someone who was assaulted in an attempted carjacking last week, and her own injuries seemed less important to her than the death of a 6-year-old in a drive-by shooting a few days ago. Getting beat up sucks, but a dead kid seems a million times worse.

  13. Justin

    And there is this... also just media hype? I wouldn't want to try to stop a shoplifter these days... Why would you?

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/us/san-francisco-shoplifting-epidemic.html

    Brendan Dugan, the director of the retail crime division at CVS Health, called San Francisco “one of the epicenters of organized retail crime” and said employees were instructed not to pursue suspected thieves because encounters had become too dangerous.

    “We’ve had incidents where our security officers are assaulted on a pretty regular basis in San Francisco,” Dugan said.

    These retailers ought to close up in those places. And they do!

  14. Special Newb

    Once again, if violent crime overall is but the murder rate is way up that is worse.

    A bit less likely to get into a dangerous situation but significantly more likely to die if you do. Where you would have lived before now you don't. Unless violent crime is down more than 2% it is much worse.

  15. Traveller

    Is this like writing on water?

    I would like to come back and agree with...Special Newb; Justin; golack and cephalopod.

    I happened to watch the news this evening and both national and local had special comments of LA crime...this just bad for Dems...and we need to address this issue.

    Best Wishes, Traveller

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