Crime Los Angeles

"Our mission is to . . . enhance public safety and to reduce the fear and incidence of crime." --Mission statement of the Los Angeles Police Department Through the 1990s, the Los Angeles Police Department has fulfilled half its mandate. Crime is down dramatically; in some categories such as homicides, the numbers are lower than they have been in more than 25 years.

Japanese tourists by the hundreds still come to Los Angeles' Little Tokyo every day to browse, take pictures, eat and shop, but they don't spend much money anymore. Gone are the days when sleepy-eyed honeymooners just off the plane arrived in Little Tokyo on tour buses, and in the course of 40 minutes at Weller Court gleefully bought $2,000 worth of Ferragamo and Bally handbags and shoes--and even found time for a bowl of noodles or curry rice before returning to the bus.

They might have looked like just another group of joy-riding teens out for the night in their parents' cars as they sped through a hilly Encino neighborhood in a Mercedes sedan and Jeep Cherokee. That may be how the evening began, but by the next day the vehicles had been impounded as getaway cars and the boys who had been cruising in them had become murder suspects. Now a community is struggling to make sense of a senseless crime: the stabbing death of 17-year-old Abtin Tangestanifar.

The media caravan follows breaking news like the old wagon trains followed reports of a gold rush, heading out where it is told everything is happening and setting up camp. That's why just about everyone in Los Angeles is used to seeing images of a phalanx of photographers, reporters and camera operators gathered around crime scenes, courthouses and celebrity homes.

Detectives at the Los Angeles Police Department's Devonshire station used a new tool recently to nab two Granada Hills 18-year-olds believed to have burglarized and vandalized 20 schools in the area. The cases were all similar. Desktop computers were overturned, windows shattered and the chemical snow of fire extinguishers sprayed across classrooms.

The police report on a two-year curfew designed to curb youth crime concluded that it was ineffective, but San Fernando Valley high school students offered harsher evaluations Tuesday: "Useless," "pointless" and "invasive," to name a few. "It's just harassment," complained Traci Muzila, a senior at Stoney Point High School in Chatsworth, who, along with seven friends, recently received a citation after leaving a party after the curfew hour of 10 p.m.

Aggressive police enforcement of nighttime curfews "has not significantly decreased" violent crime or reduced the number of young crime victims, according to a Los Angeles Police Department report submitted to the City Council on Monday. "Having task forces to enforce curfew is not always a cost-effective method or the best utilization of [police] personnel and other resources," concludes the report sent by Police Chief Bernard C. Parks to the council's Public Safety Committee.

Mayor Richard Riordan and top law enforcement officials Friday proclaimed that a sweeping anti-gang effort in the neighborhood where an LAPD officer was killed last month has reduced gang crimes. "There should never be another Brian Brown," Riordan said, referring to the 27-year-old police officer who was shot by a gang member Nov. 29 in the area near Culver City. The anti-gang effort is part of an expanded program launched after the 1995 slaying of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen in Cypress Park.

Responding to a recent rash of gang-related slayings, police officers raided dozens of South Los Angeles residences Tuesday, arresting at least 12 people, including a suspected gang member who allegedly shot and killed two men. The LAPD operation, dubbed Task Force 98, came in response to three weeks of violence spawned by rekindled gang feuds, leaving seven people dead and several wounded.

Mayor Richard Riordan, who has long argued for punishing juvenile offenders swiftly to deter them from committing crimes, visited a novel project Tuesday that has dramatically cut down the amount of time needed to bring youngsters to trial on minor offenses. The project, established to handle traffic, truancy and minor drug violations, reports an overwhelming success rate, and it left the initially skeptical mayor promising to seek expansion of the program.