Murder mystery: Why are more people being killed in Los Angeles than in other big cities in California and the U.S.? The I-Team’s Eric Leonard reports.
The number of murders in Los Angeles increased in the first months of 2024, making LA an outlier among many of the nation’s other large cities where homicides have steadily declined following significant reductions last year.
Data from the Los Angeles Police Department shows, as of mid-March, the murder rate had climbed to about 30% above the same period in 2023, and the number of people shot, comprising both murders and people who survived shootings, also crept above early 2023 numbers.
LAPD Chief Dominic Choi told the Board of Police commissioners this week, that since mid-March, the 30% increase had "dropped" to about 9.5% with the city recording 81 murders compared with 74 during the same period in 2023.
“I’m happy to say though, for this prior week, we had zero homicides,” Choi said, referring to the week ending April 6.
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Within this year’s murders, crime reports analyzed by the I-Team show most of the victims were men between 19 and 29 years old, guns were the most frequent weapon used, and the majority occurred in Central and South Los Angeles.
During the same time period other large cities in California recorded fewer murders, including a near 31% drop in San Francisco, a 47% drop in San Diego, and a 17% drop in Oakland, according to a data dashboard assembled by AH Datalytics, a firm that provides crime and other data analysis.
Jeff Asher, one of the company’s founders and a former CIA analyst, said his review of data from 202 cities nationwide showed an average decline of nearly 20% in 2024.
“I wouldn’t expect necessarily that figure holds up through the year, but even half as large of a decline would be the largest 1 year decline ever recorded,” he told the I-Team.
“A place like Los Angeles, which saw a big decrease in 2023, and this year is not seeing a decrease, it’s kind of early in the year to understand that, and there’s so many factors that come into play that it’s really difficult to necessarily ascertain the exact reasons why,” he said.
Mayor Karen Bass's office said her Office of Community Safety is focused on trying to prevent violence through partnerships with community groups and organizations and investments in more intervention strategies.
"We will do everything we can to keep Angelenos safe, such as working with the Los Angeles Police Department to increase patrols, supporting the homicide division's efforts to monitor and mitigate loss of life," said spokesman Zach Seidl.
"During her first year in office, both violent crime and homicides decreased compared to the year before she was elected," he said.
Violent crime began to drop nationally after the abnormal peaks recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic, with more significant reductions in 2023, according to data from California’s Department of Justice and the national Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Statewide data from California showed that in 2022, the most recent year for which a full accounting was available, the number of murders declined by about 5% compared with 2021, and the murder rate dropped to about 5.7 per 100,000 people, significantly below the peaks of 10 and 9 per 100,000 that were recorded in the 1980s and 1990s.
