1991 Updates : Police Take Bite Out of Hollywood Crime

This past year wasn’t the best of times for Hollywood, as gang members, drug dealers and cruisers descended on Tinseltown and drove the murder and violent crime rates way up.

By year’s end, however, police said their special efforts to beat the crime wave were beginning to work.

At midyear, serious crime reported in Hollywood was 21% higher than at the same time in 1990, a rate of increase that far outpaced any other area in the city of Los Angeles. By the end of the year, however, the crime rate increase in Hollywood was 13%--not a perfect resolution to the crime problem, conceded Deputy Los Angeles Police Chief Glenn Levant, but a good start.

“I think that the crime trend is going down, and I’m sure it’s going to continue,” said Levant, who is the commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s four Westside divisions, including Hollywood. Police were still compiling statistics on murder and other crimes, so they can make specific comparisons to last year and previous years, Levant said.

Up to July 14, there were 29 homicides, a 52.6% increase over the first six months of 1990. Robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, car theft and some other serious crimes increased sharply too, according to midyear statistics provided by police.

Responding to the crime increase, police established a special foot patrol in a “hot spot” area near the intersection of Yucca Street and Cahuenga Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue. Six officers and a sergeant, who have been assigned to walk beats in the area almost around the clock, have scared away a significant number of drug dealers and gang members, Levant said.

And a special police team has been cracking down on the gang members who cruise Hollywood and Sunset boulevards on Friday and Saturday nights, and it has impounded hundreds of cars and arrested dozens of scofflaws, Levant said. At times, as many as 70 police officers and 30 additional city traffic control officers are assigned to the area during cruising hours.

As a result, the two famous boulevards--which had been closed to traffic because of cruising--are now open all of Friday night and most of Saturday night. And, Levant said, “The cruising problem has abated almost completely.”