Slayings Rise in City for 2nd Year

By ANDREW BLANKSTEIN and ZANTO PEABODY

Jan. 9, 2002 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

The city of Los Angeles experienced a second year of increases in homicides, as well as jumps in other categories of violent and property crimes, according to 2001 statistics released Tuesday by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Figures showed that 584 people were killed citywide over the past year, an increase of about 6% from 2000, when 551 people were slain, and about 37% above the 1999 level.

Last year’s total was half the record high of 1,096, set in 1992. Killings then fell steadily until hitting a 30-year low of 425 in 1999, according to Robbery-Homicide Division statistics.

“It’s the kind of violence that we saw emerging in the late 1980s and early 1990s, involving street narcotics and sales coupled with gang activity,” said LAPD Capt. Jim Tatreau of the Robbery-Homicide Division. “It also portends a significant challenge [for the city] to avoid returning to the level of violence we had a decade ago.”

Tatreau noted some familiar patterns: Most of the killings occurred in the city’s urban core. The area represents less than half of Los Angeles’ 3.7 million population, but it experienced nearly three-quarters of the homicides.

Of the LAPD’s 18 divisions, the top four for homicides--Southwest, Southeast, 77th Street and Rampart--together accounted for 266 killings, or about 45% of the citywide total.

In contrast, the four divisions with the lowest murder rates--Central (downtown), West Los Angeles, West Valley and Van Nuys--had a combined 54 deaths, or roughly 9% of the citywide total.

As in past years, victims were disproportionately male--Latino or African American--and in their late teens and early 20s. Most of the homicides were tied to drugs and gangs.

Nowhere was the problem more acute than in LAPD’s 77th Street Division, which according to official statistics had 82 killings in 2001.

Several 77th Street detectives, who declined to be identified, attributed the rise in killings to a lack of resources and more important, constraints on proactive policing.

“Police want to do their jobs and do the right thing. But from our perspective, we are spending more resources on investigating ourselves than keeping the community safe,” said one 77th Street detective, referring to more aggressive investigations of alleged officer misconduct in the wake of the Rampart scandal.

Other areas of the city also had to contend with rising murder rates. In the San Fernando Valley, the Foothill Division murder rate spiked 60% to 35 killings because of gang-related slayings and several multiple homicides.

Foothill Det. Frank Bishop lamented deep cuts to the Community Law Enforcement and Recovery Program, a Los Angeles County program that had financed aggressive anti-gang efforts since the mid-1990s.

“We’ve had a huge increase [in gang killings] and it’s something that the department, the bureau, the division are aggressively trying to address,” Bishop said. “Can we eradicate gang activity? No. But it’s not a secret that throwing more bodies at the problem will lessen the impact.”

UCLA historian Eric Monkonnen, who is compiling a history of homicides in Los Angeles, said police have to work harder on community relations and stopping easily identifiable criminals--such as armed parolees--before they kill.

“Some of the solution is going to be allocation of resources,” Monkonnen said. “But maybe they need to concentrate much more in the areas where the worst crime, homicide, is the worst.”

More broadly, there was a 7% year-over-year rise in serious crimes, which include murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault-domestic violence. One exception was the number of reported rapes, which fell by 4.5% in 2001, although they remained up 5.4% over a two-year span.

Property crimes also increased. Auto thefts led the way with a 7% jump, followed by burglary, up 5%, and larcenies, up 4%.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Violent Crimes

Aggra-

vated

Area Homicide Rape Robbery Assault Total

77th St. 82 102 1,458 2,322 3,964

Rampart 55 119 1,639 1,554 3,367

Southeast 68 72 1,181 1,766 3,087

Southwest 61 79 1,296 1,451 2,887

Wilshire 29 95 1,372 1,165 2,661

Newton 45 61 1,166 1,182 2,454