EDITORIAL : SAFER LIVING; CONTINUED DROP IN VIOLENT CRIME IS ONE POSITIVE THING TO REMEMBER ABOUT 1998.WHILE 1998 was dominated by reports of presidential sex, lies and impeachment impeachment, formal accusation issued by a legislature against a public official charged with crime or other serious misconduct. In a looser sense the term is sometimes applied also to the trial by the legislature that may follow. , the U.S. Justice Department, in contrastingly silent fashion, released report after report illustrating a continued decline in the violent crime rate here and nationwide. Nationwide, the latest statistics show that robbery declined 17 percent in 1997. That is something we have seen in Los Angeles this year in a much more telling way. According to the Los Angeles Police Department "LAPD" and "L.A.P.D." redirect here. For other uses, see LAPD (disambiguation).  This article or section is written like an . ,
robberies from Jan. 1 to Dec. 26 were down 23.3 percent from the same
time period in 1997.
Federal officials attribute the decrease to the dwindling dwin·dle v. dwin·dled, dwin·dling, dwin·dles v.intr. To become gradually less until little remains. v.tr. To cause to dwindle. See Synonyms at decrease. crack cocaine market and law enforcement's attempts to confiscate To expropriate private property for public use without compensating the owner under the authority of the Police Power of the government. To seize property. When property is confiscated it is transferred from private to public use, usually for reasons such as handguns from criminals and juveniles. At the same time, an additional crime linked to gun use, homicide, also has dropped considerably. In L.A., murders are down 27.6 percent this year. Overall, major crimes - which are robberies, homicides, rapes, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larceny larceny, in law, the unlawful taking and carrying away of the property of another, with intent to deprive the owner of its use or to appropriate it to the use of the perpetrator or of someone else. , automobile thefts and violent crime - are down 12.6 percent through 51 weeks of 1998. Law enforcement officials on the local and federal levels attribute the decline in crime to several factors, including more aggressive police work and longer prison sentences for career criminals. Crime in communities throughout the region also has continued to drop. In Los Angeles, Chief Bernard C. Parks Bernard Parks (born December 7, 1943 in Beaumont, Texas) is a member of the Los Angeles City Council, representing the 8th District in South Los Angeles and former Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Parks attended Los Angeles City College, received his B.S. and his staff deserve credit. While they have benefited from an increased police force, they have developed a proactive strategy aimed at attacking crime before it happens. The department's computerized crime analysis system provides updated statistics and locations of various crimes that allow them to target specific areas. For instance, when there was a spate of reported rapes in the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. earlier this year, police officials reassigned their top detectives from downtown to investigate and increased patrols in some areas. Subsequently, rapes in 1998 are down nearly 11 percent in the Valley and 5.5 percent citywide, according to the LAPD 1. LAPD - Link Access Procedure on the D channel. 2. LAPD - Los Angeles Police Department. statistics. An additional factor that cannot be overlooked - and which authorities acknowledge - is the surging economy, which has contributed to the employment of those who had been or were susceptible to working in the illicit drug illicit drug Street drug, see there trade. This may have been one reason why not only were there fewer seekers for temporary part-time jobs at area malls this holiday season but there also were fewer criminals hitting the malls. For instance, when officers placed packages in unlocked cars to catch unsuspecting criminals at the Fallbrook Mall in West Hills, no thieves took the bait. Mall spokeswoman Lysa Barry summed up the sting succinctly: ``It was a bomb!'' All of this is good news for everybody. Let's hope that the public's slow-to-accept perception of declining crime now can finally catch up to the reality. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion