FBI SAYS CRIME RATES DOWN IN L.A., NATION.Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff WriterCrime rates continued to plunge in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. and the nation during 1997, with America's murder rate hitting its lowest level in 30 years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time FBI announced Sunday. In Los Angeles, the number of homicides fell 47 percent from 1993 through 1997. Nationwide, the murder rate of 6.8 homicides per 100,000 residents was the lowest since 1967's rate of 6.2. ``These decreases are real and go beyond a statistical blip,'' Attorney General Janet Reno Janet Reno (born July 21, 1938) was the first and to date only female Attorney General of the United States (1993–2001). She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11. said Sunday. In Los Angeles, the decline has continued into 1998. 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 . statistics covering the first nine months of the year
show the number of murders in the city falling 30 percent compared with
the same period a year ago. In the San Fernando Valley San Fernando ValleyValley, 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. , the drop was even greater - 39 percent. Researchers, politicians and police cited a number of reasons for the decrease - from tougher sentencing laws to the strong economy. ``Nobody has the exact answer,'' said Lt. Gary Hallden with the LAPD's West Valley Division. ``It's a combination of things. . . . I'd also like to think it's the product of a lot of hard work by law enforcement.'' Final FBI figures for 1997 showed a 2 percent drop from the year before in the number of major crimes reported to more than 17,000 police agencies around the nation. The 13.2 million total crimes were 7 percent below the 1993 figure. The incidence of robbery hasn't been this low since 1970; the burglary rate is the smallest since 1967. Murder rates have dropped significantly in major cities. They fell 65 percent in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of since 1991, for example. Los Angeles and New York alone, in fact, account for more than one-fourth of the nation's decline in murder in the 1990s. Juvenile crime, which experts feared would soar in the 1990s as the teen-age population grew, also fell in 1997. Juvenile arrests were down 4 percent, and the number of juveniles apprehended on murder charges dropped 16 percent. ``Juvenile crime is not something that we have to accept as a way of life,'' Reno said. ``We can bring these numbers down, and we are.'' Even so, the crime story is not a uniformly happy one across the country. Crime went up in 16 states last year and was particularly vexing to some of the rural Upper Midwest The Upper Midwest is a region of the United States with no universally agreed-upon boundary, but it almost always lies within the US Census Bureau's definition of the Midwest and includes the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as at least the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. states. Double-digit increases in violent crime occurred in Iowa and South Dakota South Dakota (dəkō`tə), state in the N central United States. It is bordered by North Dakota (N), Minnesota and Iowa (E), Nebraska (S), and Wyoming and Montana (W). , for example. And California again won the dubious distinction of having more law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty In the Line of Duty may refer to:
Politicians were quick to seize the latest statistics as proof that their programs - including the 1994 ``three strikes, you're out'' law that requires stiff jail sentences for repeat criminals - were working. ``With the murder rate down by more than 25 percent since I took office, Americans are safer today than they have been in many years,'' President Clinton said. ``Our strategy of putting more police on the beat and getting guns off the street is working.'' Hallden said the ``three strikes'' law may well be contributing to Los Angeles' shrinking crime rate. ``In the '80s, we were arresting a lot of the same people over and over and over, like a revolving door,'' he said. The drop in crime rates appears to be continuing this year in many Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, communities. Simi Valley Simi Valley (sē`mē, sĭm`ē), city (1990 pop. 100,217), Ventura co., SW Calif. in an oil, fruit, and farm region; laid out 1887, inc. 1969. saw fewer murders in the first half of 1998 than during the same period of 1997 - one this year compared with four last year - and its violent crime rate fell as well. So did the violent crime rate in Thousand Oaks, which had no murders in the first half of either year. The Associated Press and Scripps-McClatchy Western Service contributed to this story. CAPTION(S): chart Chart: Drop in crime Associated Press |
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