Violent Crimes, Except Homicide, Decrease in L.A.

Violent crime in Los Angeles continued to drop this year in every category except homicides, which saw an uptick for the first time in six years.

Through Dec. 14, violent crimes, including rape, robbery and aggravated assault, dropped about 5% from last year, while homicides increased about 2.5%, according to preliminary Los Angeles Police Department statistics.

The crime rate, records show, is not dropping at the pace it has in previous years. That, coupled with the increase in homicides, has criminologists wondering whether the city’s crime rate, which has plummeted since 1992, is starting to level off.

“It’s bad news,” Eric Monkkonen, a UCLA professor who studies national homicide statistics, said of the increase in slayings. “The big concern is that it’s going to turn around.”

The LAPD statistics show the city lagging well behind national trends that show serious crime dropping about 10% in the first six months of the year throughout the country--with a 13% decline in homicides.

LAPD officials, nonetheless, remain buoyed by the overall drop in crime in the city and say they are optimistic that it will continue to decrease. They also point out that Los Angeles’ crime rate declines have exceeded national trends over the past couple of years.

“There is a lot to be pleased about,” said Cmdr. David J. Kalish, LAPD spokesman. “These numbers are good. Over the past several years they’ve been great.”

Even with the slight increase, the number of homicides in Los Angeles remains at levels comparable to those of 30 years ago. As of Dec. 14, there had been 414 homicides in the city compared with 404 for the same period last year, which saw about a 27% decline over the previous year. In 1998, the city had 419 homicides and, at its current pace, will exceed that number.

LAPD statistics do not include “justifiable homicides,” such as incidents of self-defense or cases in which a police officer lawfully kills a suspect. There have been 14 such homicides by police this year.

In areas patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, serious crimes, including homicides, have dropped about 13% through September, the most recent statistics available.

New York City, like Los Angeles, is also experiencing an upswing in homicides, while other crimes continue to drop. Both cities, however, have seen remarkable declines in past years.

Franklin E. Zimring, professor of law at UC Berkeley and director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute, said Los Angeles and New York are hitting a “leveling off” period, but he does not believe it is a cause for alarm. He said there are no signs that homicides will start climbing in the dramatic fashion that they fell.

“After years of success, achieving marginal reductions gets harder,” he said.

Zimring said it is not realistic to expect further significant drops in homicides. “It sounds a little bit like ‘What have you done for me lately?’ ” he said of such expectations.

Criminologists, police and academicians attribute the steady decrease in violent crime locally and nationally over the past six years to a number of factors, including a stronger economy, stabilization of the lucrative and often deadly drug trade, stricter sentencing laws, improved policing tactics, periodic truces among violent street gangs and an overall decrease in the number of young adults in the age groups most likely to commit crime.

The downward turn has improved the LAPD’s ability to solve crimes, particularly homicides, for which clearance rates have increased as killings have decreased. Having more time to investigate, detectives said, was the key factor in solving more cases.

According to the LAPD statistics, eight of the department’s 18 stations have seen an upswing in homicide. The South Bureau, which recently disbanded a large homicide bureau so detectives could be assigned to individual stations, has seen the largest jump in slayings.

LAPD statistics also show that the number of emergency calls dropped 4% this year from last. Despite that decrease, officers’ response times were 9% slower this year compared to last year. Instead of averaging 6.7 minutes per emergency call, they averaged 7.3 minutes this year.

There was also a 5% drop this year in “officer-initiated activities”--non-radio call procedures, such as writing tickets, investigating suspicious behavior and assisting stranded motorists.

Against the Trend

There are fewer violent crimes in Los Angeles this year, but the number of homicides was up slightly from the same period last year.

Homicides in 1999: 414*

* Through Dec. 14

Source: Los Angeles Police Department