Crime & Safety

Homicides Down 50% in Northeast Area in 2013, 13% Citywide

The city is on pace to record the fewest number of homicides since 1966, a time when the city had about a million less people.

Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck announced at a press conference recently that homicides and overall crime are down significantly in Los Angeles in 2013. 

Through Nov. 7, the city has recorded 13 percent fewer homicides than at the same point in 2012, for a total of 222, which is 33 less than in 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times

The fall in homicides is even more dramatic in the LAPD Northeast Division's patrol area, which has seen a 50 percent drop. Through Nov. 2, the division had recorded five homicides, down from 10 in 2012. The Northeast Division patrols Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Echo Park and other neighborhoods in Northeast L.A. 

Overall crime has fallen 5 percent in L.A. in 2013, with rapes down 27 percent and overall property crimes down 3 percent. In the Northeast area, violent crime has fallen 12 percent, and property crime has fallen 1 percent. 

If the current pace of homicides holds through the year, it will be the lowest total number the city has experienced since 1966, a time when L.A. had about a million less people, the Times reported.

"When I was a young police officer working in South L.A., every year crime would increase," Beck said, according to the Times. "I started out in the late '70s... It was just given that it would increase."

In 1990s, murders skyrocketed and hit a high of 1,092 in 1992, compared to 298 last year.

"If you'd asked me in 1990—any time in the 1990s—what it would be like in 2013, I would have thought 'Blade Runner,'" Beck said, referring to director Ridley Scott's violent depiction of a futuristic L.A., according to the Times. "To see it reverse; really is going back in time... it is amazing."


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