CRIME REALLY DOWN, AND LAPD THE REASON.

Byline: George Gascon  Local View

RECENTLY there has been a great deal of speculation as to why crime is down in Los Angeles - or whether it is really down at all.

A few members of the intelligentsia attribute this reduction to an aging population and an improved economy. Given enough time, I am sure some of our more enterprising critics could even find a correlation between the lunar cycles and the recent reductions in crime in Los Angeles.

But as someone who dedicates most of his professional time to searching for ways to reduce crime, I find these efforts to downplay good police work disingenuous. Unbiased social scientists know better.

Without a doubt, there are many factors that can affect crime in a community. Population growth and demographic shifts can and generally do influence crime patterns. However, the same variables affect public health, economic development and other aspects of our daily lives. Yet seldom do we see scientists downplaying the importance of professional practices in other industries as they do in policing.

The notion that policing practices can have more than a casual relationship in lowering crime seems to elude so many in academia. Critical evidence of police effectiveness is downplayed to fit old scientific paradigms or summarily dismissed as statistical anomalies. Unfortunately, this arrogance inhibits legitimate dialogue.

It is also an oversimplification to attribute L.A.'s successes to the ability to move personnel as a reactionary force from one hot spot to the next. Los Angeles does not have enough officers to sustain the crime reductions we experienced in the last three years by flooding neighborhoods with cops consistently. Our successes are mainly attributable to committed cops.

We are creating a culture in which police officers, from the highest levels of Los Angeles Police Department management to those working the field, know not only where crime is occurring, but, more importantly, what is causing it and what to do about it.

Our people are immersed in the crime-fighting process with the single-mindedness more typical of Japanese auto industry executives in their quest for the perfect car. LAPD personnel are continuously assessing the city's crime picture several times a week, reviewing and implementing strategies, taking corrective actions and evaluating our performance. We hold each other accountable for outcomes. We are teaching ourselves to examine crime much the same way a pathologist studies the nature of diseases to search for a cure.

We also engage in the mathematical analysis of crime. For instance, we know that a relatively small percentage of the population (suspects and victims) and places (businesses and other venues) in any community disproportionately impact crime in that community. We call it our ``10 percent factor.'' LAPD officers are encouraged to determine who those people and what those places are, identify the most effective way to deal with the problem, and implement appropriate solutions.

The results speak for themselves. In L.A., crime is substantially down for three consecutive years, despite the fact that unemployment is higher today than in 2000, our population is younger than in other major cities, we have more poverty than many comparable cities and fewer cops to do the job.

The bottom line is that cops count. When one takes an objective view of Los Angeles today, police officers' doing their job - not demographic changes or the economy - most likely account for this substantial crime reduction.