How many homicides so far this year?

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351, as of May 15, according to the Los Angeles County coroner, which issued a year-to-year comparison of reported homicides to date countywide at the request of The Homicide Report.

That’s down 8.4% from the same Jan. 1-May 15 period last year, when the coroner counted 383 reported homicides.

The sharp drop in the months leading up to summer--traditionally a high homicide season in L.A.--was spread across various regions of the county, but appears especially pronounced in some old hotspots, such as the MacArthur Park area, Watts, parts of South Los Angeles and the Pacoima area. Downtown Los Angeles also had fewer homicides than last year. The dip in these areas, as well as in some comparatively calm safe territory, such as Venice, has helped the Los Angeles Police Department post a 22% drop in homicides citywide this year.

The LAPD is not alone in reporting a drop. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which handles homicides in unincorporated areas and a number of smaller cities in the county, is also reporting a decrease in homicides, though not as dramatic as the LAPD’s. There have been nearly 10% fewer killings in the sheriff’s areas as of May 21, 2007, compared to the year-earlier period.

The coroner’s numbers differ from those of the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department for several reasons. For one, they include homicides being investigated by all the police agencies in the county, not just the county sheriff and LAPD. A number of smaller cities which lie outside Los Angeles city limits, and which are not served by the Sheriff’s Department, are also represented in the figures. These include Long Beach, which has seen homicides rise to 17 so far this year, compared to 10 at this point last year.

Also, the coroner uses a different definition of homicide than police agencies use. The coroner’s more comprehensive definition includes such borderline cases as a woman who died of a heart attack after her purse was snatched. It also includes justifiable homicides and killings by police officers. The latter have increased this year, adding at least 11 homicides to the coroner’s tally.

Finally, the coroner’s count of so-called ‘reported homicides’ is subject to change. That’s because a small number of cases initially thought to be homicides are shown through autopsies to be accidents, and vice versa. (The Homicide Report generally waits for such borderline cases to be finalized before listing them, one reason the total number of victims reported on The Homicide Report is smaller than the official coroner’s tally.)

But even though these agencies use different measuring sticks for homicides, they have tracked the same broad trend this year -- a steep decrease in killings compared to last year, and a solid continuation of the current historic trend of relatively low violence locally.

Since the early 1990s, the homicide trend line in Los Angeles County has resembled a tall mountain followed by a deep valley and a few foothills:

Killings reached a dizzying peak in 1992, with 2,113 deaths countywide, according to the coroner, then fell to an equally dizzying low of just 965 deaths in 1999. Since then, the numbers have edged up and bobbled up and down, dipping recently. Now, the county once again appears to be approaching the historic 1999 low point in homicide.

But it remains to be seen if the year continues as quietly as it began. Homicides in Los Angeles County typically rise in the summer months--especially August--and sudden, sharp spikes are not uncommon. Summer homicide increases can probably be traced to a number of factors, such as the fact that people in Los Angeles are more likely to be outside in summertime, and students are often out of school.

A less obvious factor is include the problem of so-called ‘gang birthdays’ in Los Angeles. Many criminal gangs derive their names from the streets where they originated. And gangs are concentrated in the southern reaches of the Los Angeles street grid, where the street names are the higher double digits. Their ‘gang birthdays’, therefore, tend to fall in the summertime.

A gang named after 87th Street, for example, may celebrate its gang birthday on Aug. 7--’8-7’--while one named for 61st Street will celebrate on June 1-’6-1.’

This is a problem because of the parties the birthdays generate. Parties are high-risk scenarios for homicide generally, but gang birthday parties are especially troublesome, sometimes resulting in fights, killings, or simply quarrels which bring later paybacks. For example, an argument on a summer cruise trip taken by a Watts gang to celebrate one such holiday several years ago led to a string of retaliation killings afterward.

More recently, police have said the killing of Jahaira Keys, 17, in Carson, could be related to a May 2 party involving members of a gang associated with 52nd Street--’5-2.’

Chance also plays a significant role in homicide trends, making homicide that statistics even more unpredictable. The difference between the rare fatal injury and the more common non-fatal injury is often a matter of a bullet hitting a fraction of an inch to one side or another.

For example, Sunday’s shooting at a party in Pico Rivera, which left one person dead, could just as easily have been a quadruple homicide, since three other people were critically injured.

LAPD statistics offer a glimpse of how this remorseless luck of the draw affects homicide numbers. In the same period that LAPD homicides reported homicides falling by 22%, the total number of people struck by gunfire, including those who were wounded but survived, fell by just 9%. Had more died, LAPD’s progress in combating homicide would have been more limited.

It’s also unclear how well trends in the first few months of the year predict trends in the remaining months. This is especially true in traditionally high-crime areas, such as South Los Angeles. Violence there has been known to explode upward, or drop steeply, with little warning.

All told, the LAPD reported 139 homicides as of May 19 versus 178 at the same time last year.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported 130 homicides as of May 20 for its areas and cities it assists, versus 144 at this time last year.

Areas that have seen homicide drop include the sheriff’s far eastern and southern regional operational area, which covers San Dimas, Norwalk and Industry, and in the northern and western area, which includes Altadena, Palmdale and Lancaster.

LAPD divisions that have posted significantly lower homicides this year include Southeast, Rampart, 77th Street, Central, Pacific, and Newton. Homicides have also dropped in other outlying cities, such as Inglewood, which has reported seven homicides this year, compared to 20 at this time last year.

Areas where homicides have increased include the sheriff’s Southern region, covering Athens and Compton, where homicides have risen by 12%, and the LAPD’s Harbor area, which has also seen a significant increase. Several other areas have seen homicides stay the same or rise slightly, including LAPD’s Hollenbeck division in Boyle Heights, and its Southwest Division which covers Exposition Park and the Crenshaw area.