The Beverly Hills home where the wife of a music producer was shot and killed is guarded by private security officers. The Los Angeles Times is owned by Al Seib.
Los Angeles' most exclusive stores were broken into. A star of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" and a host of a cable show were victims of a robbery. The wife of a music legend was shot to death in her Beverly Hills home.
After two years of rising violent crime in Los Angeles, these incidents have sparked a national conversation and led to local concern about both the crimes themselves and where the outrage over the violence will lead.
Oprah Winfrey expressed her grief over the killing of her 43 million followers by saying that the laws of the universe have been "shaken" by it. "The world is upside down."
Clarence and Jacqueline are related. Mark Von Holden is a photographer.
In L.A., violent crime has gone up sharply, as it has in other cities, despite the fact that overall city crime rates remain far below records set during the notorious gang wars of the 1990s. Poor communities and vulnerable populations, such as the homeless, have been the sites of a lot of violence.
In recent months, crime has crept up in wealthier enclaves and become the center of public discourse in L.A., against a backdrop of COVID-19 angst and evolving political views of what role police and prosecutors should play.
For decades, California has been at the forefront of criminal justice reform, rolling back tough sentencing laws and reducing prison populations.
California voters largely support many of these measures, and both San Francisco and Los Angeles have elected district attorneys with reform agendas. Those who are concerned about crime and those who believe in liberal policies have become more vocal.
It is a discourse that is defined by glaring differences of opinion and a yawning gap between the perception of local crime and the reality on the ground.
The owner of the Brooklyn Projects skateboard shop on Melrose Avenue carries a gun because of the recent increase in robberies and burglaries.
He said he had never seen anything like it. I have been broken into three times in the last two years.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Police Department ChiefMichel Moore said at a Thursday press conference that more offenders should be locked up and questioned the policies that allow many non-violent arrestees to be released without bail.
Moore lamented that the suspects had all been released pending trial, despite the fact that they had been arrested in several high-profile "smash-and-grab" burglaries. warehousing criminals in jails without rehabilitating them is not a solution, but neither is giving the streets to repeat offenders.
Los Angeles County The Atty. is an Atty. George Gascn, whose progressive policies around prosecution and sentencing many blame for the increase in crime, was absent from the press conference but said through his office that he is working closely with law enforcement partners to hold perpetrators accountable for such brazen crimes.
The increased rhetoric is a departure from the language used by many of the same officials after George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer. This has set off alarms among activists who led protests, who want to see progressive justice measures enacted, and hear echoes of past eras when overpolicing and excessive incarceration was the norm.
Melina Abdullah is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. We want to move forward, not backward.
Melina Abdullah is speaking at a meeting. Irfan Khan is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.
Black Lives Matter mourns with the family of Avant. She said that officials should not use the death or recent property crime to push for harsher measures because they have been proven to not work.
"We need to think about what kind of economic desperation actually creates property crime and how do we get people out of that state," he said. How do we create good jobs? How do we make housing more affordable?
Police have warned against accepting claims about crime that may not have a basis in reality as concern over crime trends has increased.
The "smash-and-grab" and "follow- home" trends in L.A., which have caused concern, are not indicative of a surge in property crime.
Property crime is up 2.6% over the same period last year but is down 6.6% from 2019. Over last year, robbery is up 3.9%, but down 13.6%. The number of criminals is down from last year and the year before. Car thefts are up over the course of the year.
There is more concerning violent crime. Police data shows that homicides are up 46.7% and shooting victims are up 51.4%. There were 358 homicides in L.A. by the end of November, compared with 355 in all of 2020. There have not been more homicides in one year since 2008.
Beverly Hills Police Chief Mark Stainbrook announces an arrest. The Los Angeles Times has a story on Al Seib.
Police in Beverly Hills stress that crime is rare. Beverly Hills is one of the safest cities in the nation, according to the police chief.
Beverly Hills crime was down 2% by the end of October. The number of violent crimes in the city has increased over the past two years, but the total number of crimes is still small.
It's not clear what reforms the concerns about crime in the Los Angeles area will lead to.
California adopted harsher sentences and increased incarceration after a crime spike in the 1990s. The reform movement acknowledged that the policies went too far. According to a poll of L.A. voters, public safety is less of a problem than homelessness, housing affordability, traffic, climate change and air quality.
Jonathan Simon, a criminal justice professor at UC Berkeley's law school and author of "Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Changed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear," said it is unlikely that crime concerns will completely derail the progressive criminal justice reform movement that began with
He said that such concern could slow those reforms, showing how potent the political value of crime is and how quickly politicians and others can return to a "crackdown" mentality.
Simon said that it's a powerful trope for 40 years.
A group of child-care providers sat together for lunch on Friday. One woman said she moved her walking schedule earlier in the day to feel more secure.
Beverly Hills does not compare to other areas in terms of the amount of crime, according to a babysitter who has worked in L.A. for two decades.
She said she wouldn't have noticed the area was more dangerous if she hadn't watched TV. I don't think it is.
Janette Waight, a nurse who has worked in Beverly Hills for seven years, was strolling through the park with her dog.
"Over the last few years, this area has become more and more dangerous," Waight said. "It's not just crime, it's homelessness, and it's just a desire from people to look for quick cash rather than work."
Ruben Urcis, 90, a resident of Beverly Hills who walks twice a day along the Beverly Gardens Park walkway, said he was not concerned by the recent string of high-profile crimes.
He said that his wife was robbed at gunpoint of a white-gold wristwatch more than a decade ago outside their garage, but that people might just be noticing. She now wears a standard wristwatch.
The difference with crime now is that it's being recorded on camera for everyone to see.
He said that the people in the community don't feel safe.
The Melrose retail community isn't waiting for City Hall or the LAPD to address crime for them because there are few concrete solutions offered at Thursday's press conference. Local merchants are trying to get cameras that read license plates to help police identify people who commit crimes.
Many local merchants and employees saw the August killing of Jayren Bradford outside of Shoe Palace as a tipping point and have been chipping in funds for the cameras.
He said it was an awful situation.
The story was originally published in Los Angeles Times.
