Crime levels drops across Los Angeles for eleventh year

Crime levels across Los Angeles dropped for the 11th straight year in 2013, though it is too early to tell if crime rates have dropped similarly in the Westwood area.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s 2013 figures tallied data from a category of crimes that includes murder, rape, arson and burglary.

Crime rates in this category dropped by 5.2 percent citywide since 2012, and by 21.1 percent since 2008, said LAPD Chief Charlie Beck at a press conference last week.

University police have not yet released 2013 crime statistics, said university police spokeswoman Nancy Greenstein.

All four LAPD bureaus saw drops in crime, said Mayor Eric Garcetti at the press conference last week. He said he thought data-driven policing and community outreach programs at LAPD led to the reduction in crime.

Serious crimes in the LAPD’s West Bureau, which serves UCLA and Westwood, dropped by 5.3 percent since 2012 and by 19.6 percent since 2008.

“While this is certainly a proud accomplishment … our goal must be to try and get as close to zero on all of these crimes as we can,” Garcetti said.

In 2012 – the latest year UCPD data was made available – 1,038 Part I category crimes were reported by the agency, a 13 percent increase from the year before.

“You can’t compare our (data) to LAPD’s,” Greenstein said. “UCLA has so many more avenues for reporting. On the Hill your resident assistants will say you’ve got to report (a crime). But if something happens at your house, you may not bother.”

Greenstein said UCPD tends not to compare its own data year to year because its number of crimes is much smaller than LAPD’s, so a few crimes can make a difference in the data.

Crime levels in Westwood are usually stable because most crimes investigated by UCPD are crimes of opportunity, which are committed without planning and are usually preventable.

“For crimes of opportunity, people need to help by making concerted decisions to, for example, not leave their property unguarded,” she said.

Greenstein said university police work with community partners like the Undergraduate Students Association Council to reduce the number of crimes of opportunity.

The police department’s crime prevention efforts reached more than 20,000 students and community members last year, she said. Programs such as a presentation at New Student Orientation teach students how to prevent crimes of opportunity.

In Westwood Village, public service ambassadors working for the Westwood Village Improvement Association assist police by working with businesses to stop suspicious behavior, said executive director Andrew Thomas.

“The ambassadors act as the eyes and ears for law enforcement here in our district,” Thomas said.

Thomas said the ambassadors have assisted UCPD and LAPD several hundred times since the Westwood Business Improvement District was founded in 2011, though most were in response to crimes of opportunity such as shoplifting.

When a patron threw a chair out of the window of Peet’s Coffee & Tea on Westwood Boulevard last week, he said ambassadors identified the suspect and stood by as police arrived.

“When you have a community that watches after each other, you reduce crime,” Beck said.

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