Wither Crime Stats?

“Blob not found.”

That’s what the Los Angeles Police Department’s web pages read when trying to access city crime statistics.

For the past couple of months, finding crime rates and statistics has been difficult for the general public as the LAPD attempts to create a new computer operations and reporting system.

The traffic crime stats are available, but the other pages all read “Blob not found…The specified blob does not exist” when accessed through the department’s COMPSTAT information portal.  

While it appears this problem is merely a glitch, a “hey, this computer thing is taking waaay longer than we thought” situation that even efficient businesses face, the recent appearance of Interim Chief Dominic Choi on KFI’s John Kobylt Show to discuss, in part, those crime statistics.

On the show Monday, Choi maintained that – overall – property crime in the city is down a a bit while violent crime is holding steady compared to this time last year.  

Choi admitted that the public’s perception of crime being up in the city exists but that it is driven mostly by media reports.

Tuesday, Choi told the city’s Police Commission the same, but added a number of sub-statistics that would appear to give resident’s “perceptions” a rather significant reality boost.

Specifically, robberies are up 17.6% Choi told the Commission, adding that about one-quarter of said robberies are armed robberies.

A second stat should also let Choi understand that the the public’s perception of a lawless city is not at all unfounded.

Small business robberies – mini marts, liquor stores, and other similar shops – are up 43.6% when compared to last year.

There have been 894 such robberies in the city, a rate of almost seven a day, or one every three-and-a-half hours.

Another sub-statistic showed yet another reason the public has to be worried.  While overall residential burglaries are only up 2.8% throughout the city, the department’s West Bureau has seen a much larger increase, going up about 10% or an additional 207 residential burglaries.

The increase could be due to what Commissioner Willima Briggs dubbed ”tourist theft gangs,”  a position Choi agreed with.

These are gangs of people – typically from South America – that come to Los Angeles on tourist visas, target wealthier neighborhoods, surveil said neighborhoods with wireless cameras and other equipment to figure out when people are not home, swoop in, rob stuff, and then hop on  plane home.

Choi said the city has task force specifically created to look into the problem and the LAPD – while not out “scouring for cameras” – is offering educational material to help homeowners’ “harden (their) targets.”

The seeming disconnect between the relatively rosy picture Choi painted on KFI and the numbers he shared with the Commission Tuesday has rankled Kobylt.

“If robberies and burglaries are up so much, how could the overall numbers be down? Kobylt said.  “I don’t like being lied to.”