The LAPD could not say how many arrests have been tied to the cameras in the years they have been in operation.
Officials said that between 2004 and 2006, crime overall in and around the park decreased. But according to LAPD data, serious crimes in the area increased in 2007. Assaults rose nearly 90%, from 29 to 55. Auto thefts were up 26.5%, from 34 to 43; robberies jumped 49%, from 51 to 76.
Diaz said that MacArthur Park takes up half of the area represented by the statistics and that the crimes may be taking place in the heavily gang-occupied neighborhoods surrounding it.
But some police sources say they are concerned that gangs have reestablished a foothold in the park.
"I'm completely taken aback by this," said Councilman Ed Reyes, whose district includes MacArthur Park and who is spearheading the push for $150,000 to add six new cameras to the 6th Street Corridor. "The word to us is that they were working."
Reyes said he was told by police officials that crime had been decreasing in MacArthur Park and that no one informed him there were problems with the surveillance cameras and about the rise in violence.
Reyes said Tuesday that he would find funds to maintain any necessary broken or disabled cameras in the park, but that the new cameras along 6th Street would be maintained by the city's General Services Department.
Reyes said he would also ask the LAPD for a full status report on the condition of the cameras in and around the park.
The councilman first began publicly talking about adding cameras to the corridor last spring. The shooting last fall of a 23-day-old infant who was killed when gunmen opened fire in front of hundreds of weekend shoppers near MacArthur Park gave Reyes the political weaponry needed to ask for more surveillance cameras.
"The unfortunate tragedy was like a highlight. It amplified what we already knew was happening, but it took this tragedy to bring this kind of focus," Reyes said.
When the cameras were placed in MacArthur Park in March 2004, there was a noticeable decrease in crime around the area, he said, attributing the recent increase in violence not to broken cameras, but to "too much success" in reducing crime.
Reyes said that in the last three years, when the LAPD's Rampart Division began driving down crime, officers were periodically reassigned to other areas with higher levels of violence.
That makes it difficult to maintain a steady level of success, he said.
