Hahn Foe Posts Crime Statistics on Website

Escalating the debate over Mayor James K. Hahn’s record on crime, mayoral challenger Bob Hertzberg and the mayor’s office tussled Tuesday over an interactive city map Hertzberg posted on his campaign website to highlight areas of Los Angeles where crime has increased.

“There’s been a lot of talk about crime and gangs recently ... but it’s difficult to cut through the generalizations and see what crime looks like in our neighborhoods,” Hertzberg wrote in a message that accompanies the crime map.

“The picture overall: Crime rose between 2001 and 2003 in five of the city’s 18 station areas,” Hertzberg said on the website.

The Los Angeles Police Department divides the city into 18 divisions.

A Hertzberg spokesman said the former Assembly speaker from Sherman Oaks wants to start a conversation with voters on how safe Los Angeles neighborhoods really are -- an issue that figures to be central in March’s mayoral election.

But Deputy Mayor Julie Wong shot back that Hertzberg was playing with the numbers by ignoring figures from this year, which reflect a further drop in overall crime.

“If they want to be accurate, you’d think that they would look at the most recent numbers,” Wong said.

Hahn has made his record on crime and his efforts to make Los Angeles “the safest big city in America” a centerpiece of his reelection campaign.

The city’s rate of serious and violent crime fell 4.3% from 2001 to 2003, according to LAPD figures.

Hertzberg’s website at www.changela.com shows a map of the city indicating that in many areas, some categories of crime saw an increase between 2001 and 2003, even if the overall crime rate declined.

The map, however, shows only increases within crime categories.

Information on categories of crime in which the numbers decreased in an area over the three-year period is not noted on the map.