Crime Stats Have Gaps

A common management principle teaches that if you don’t measure a problem, you can’t correct it.

So how many of Long Beach’s most serious crimes (labeled “Part 1 crimes” against persons and property) did your council district, and others, have in 2020? In what types of crimes? The city’s crime stats don’t show this, although they used to.

What types of “quality of life” neighborhood impacting crimes (from porch thefts to sawing off catalytic converters) victimized LB neighborhoods and where? These crimes aren’t itemized leaving residents unable to tell where they occurred.

How many shootings did Long Beach have in 2020 and in what council districts were they? They’re not listed in Long Beach’s official crime statistics; they’re concealed within another crime category.

Long Beach had 36 murders in 2020, (up from 34 in 2019, the highest number since 2015 and higher than LB’s five-year average of 31.) But those are “citywide” figures that don’t show that LB’s murders disproportionately impact working class neighborhoods, a “tale of two cities” inequity experienced by families and businesses in parts of Central Long Beach and North Long Beach.

For years, LBPD routinely released crime stats by council districts. These included “Part 1” (serious) crimes against persons (murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault) and property (residential and commercial burglary, auto burglary, grand theft, petty theft, bicycle theft, auto theft and arson.)

This was powerful data but embarrassing to some incumbents in higher crime council districts. In the final years of Mayor O’Neill’s administration, city management stopped releasing data showing crimes by council districts. The matter wasn’t debated by the policy-setting City Council; it was simply implemented.

LBPD offered a flimsy numerical excuse, noting that in a few parts of town, crime reporting districts crossed council district lines, which was true, making data in those few areas unreliable, which was untrue. In those few areas, LBPD obviously knew the location of crimes and could assign them to the proper council district.

Today, the City of Long Beach offers residents crime stats by LBPD Divisions (north, south, east, west) that cross several council district lines and are even less reflective of individual neighborhood realities. LBPD’s East Division spans 5th district suburban areas to western 4th district areas (in recent months plagued by shootings) to wealthy 3rd district enclaves.

The only other way for the public and press to “reconstruct” crime stats by council district is to laboriously enter crime numbers from multiple neighborhood size crime reporting districts comprising each council district. LBPD makes this task more difficult by listing neighborhood numbers in primitive hard copy PDF form instead of in useful digital form, which LBPD has.

Part 2 crimes aren’t itemized, not even those frequently termed “quality of life” crimes. They include non-aggravated assaults, buying, receiving or possessing stolen property, vandalism, weapons violations, prostitution; drug abuses; indecent exposure, liquor laws, disorderly conduct, vagrancy and other offenses. The council could direct LBPD to pull out and itemize especially problematic Part 2 crimes (such as porch thefts and catalytic converter thefts) but the council hasn’t done so. Bike thefts are already itemized among Part 1 crimes.

Crime stat data gaps invite fog from some council incumbents. In her official 2018 candidate ballot statement, incumbent Councilwoman Stacy Mungo told voters “we have decreased neighborhood crime by 18.4% and citywide crime by 11.4%” and reiterated part of that statement in at least two mailers in her runoff campaign “brought neighborhood crime down 18%.” And in a statement her campaign attributes to Mayor Garcia “lowered our crime rate by 18%.”

There is no official LBPD or nationally recognized definition for the term “neighborhood” crime. All crimes, whether Part 1 or Part 2, obviously affect some neighborhood. Councilwoman Mungo appears to have lifted figures from LBPD’s East Division Part 1 crimes against property and portrayed them as 5th district data, which was inaccurate. Her cited 18.4% figure reflected the entire East Division and thus included areas not within the 5th council district but within council districts 3 and 4.

Her claim to have “reduced citywide crime by 11.4%” appears to have been similarly lifted from citywide Part 1 crimes against property, although listed in LBPD’s summary as 11.3%. LB’s total number of crimes citywide (Part 1 + Part 2) in 2017 decreased from 2016 by 3.6%.

In public meetings, Mayor Garcia has cited “citywide” murder stats to show “crime is down” but that doesn’t reflect the experience of families and businesses in working class neighborhoods where murders have increased since 2017 and, as the Beachcomber has previously reported (Sept. 24 2020 at: https://beachcomber.news/content/long-beach-mayorcouncil-let-lbpd-hide-crime-stats), Long Beach crime stats don’t list shootings.

LBPD includes shootings among “aggravated assaults,” a collective category that can range from a bar fight with a table fork to a near fatal shooting. LB’s practice is common among law enforcement agencies; it satisfies federal crime reporting rules, but it conceals the number and locations of Long Beach shootings unless reporters call the LBPD each day to get information for updates.

In contrast, Los Angeles’ crime stats do list the number of shootings and their locations. LAPD shows the number of shootings – with separate line items for “shots fired” and “shooting victims” and their increases/decreases and their local division (geographic) locations.

Long Beach crime stat data gaps are arguably especially relevant given the City Council’s Sept. 2020 vote to defund nearly 50 sworn officers on top of 180+ officers not restored from City Hall’s 2009-2015 budget-driven police defunding.

The City Council’s “Public Safety Committee” (Price, Supernaw, Austin) could agendize these crime stat data gap issues for discussion and recommendations to the City Council. So could any other council incumbent(s).

Bill Pearl publishes lbreport.com, an online, local news source since August 2000.