Crime Rates

The Los Angeles Police Department will remove 150 officers from patrol and other assignments to deal with the fallout from a state-mandated plan to reduce prison overcrowding, a move that Police Chief Charlie Beck said will slow response times to 911 calls. Beck and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined forces Monday to criticize the state's attempt to relieve severe prison overcrowding, saying it has unfairly saddled the LAPD with a burden that the department does not have the resources to address.

Violent crime in 2010 dropped 6% from the year before, the FBI reported Monday, the fourth consecutive year of such declines. Property crime fell 2.7% from 2009, marking the eighth consecutive annual decrease, the agency said. The government's annual report, called “Crime in the United States,” is based on data from more than 18,000 city, county, university and college, state, tribal and federal law enforcement agencies from around the nation and presents the most complete picture of what residents do to other residents in the way of crime.

In his dissent from the majority in the recent Supreme Court decision requiring California to reduce its prison population by 33,000 inmates, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that "terrible things are sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order. " But Californians shouldn't panic. The state won't have to throw open the prison doors to meet the court's order if it embraces very modest sentencing reforms. Prudent ideas for reducing the prison population have been advocated by various task forces, including ones led by former Gov. George Deukmejian, by former Atty.

A New York message Re "Medicare plan may have cost GOP a seat," May 25 Democrat Kathy Hochul took a House seat away from the Republicans in a very conservative district in New York, and most folks think it was because Republicans want to turn Medicare into a private voucher program. There were, in fact, many other issues. Polling in the district showed that voters were equally concerned with the lack of jobs created by the newly elected House majority. In addition, voters throughout the country are upset that Republicans refuse to discard the huge tax cut for the very wealthy and their refusal to end big tax breaks for oil companies.

Since when did a trip to scenic Hawaii involve human smuggling, machine-gun fire, kidnappings, international terrorism and murder? The stars of the upcoming CBS series "Hawaii Five-0," want to make it clear that the reboot of the classic crime show has levity mixed with the grit, even though the first episode on Monday contains all the above mayhem and then some. "There are waves and palm trees and girls in bikinis," said Alex O'Loughlin, who has stepped into the role of iconic island cop Steve McGarrett.

The nation's crime rate dropped 5% last year, continuing a 20-year trend that has cut the incidence of major crimes nearly in half, according to FBI statistics . Crime experts have cited several possible explanations for the falling crime rate, including better policing, a swelling of the prison population, the decline of the crack cocaine epidemic and an aging population. But regardless of the reason, crime fell sharply during the 1990s and has declined gradually since then.

Crime in Los Angeles County dropped again in 2009 despite rising unemployment and the bad economy, continuing a slide that has pushed homicides to levels not seen since the 1960s. Killings dropped about 17% in Los Angeles and by nearly a quarter in areas patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Together, the agencies investigated about 500 killings through Sunday -- a sharp drop in bloodshed compared with the more than 1,500 in 1992, the year of the Los Angeles riots.

Vicky Cristina . . . Rio de Janeiro? The Brazilian city has formed a new film commission, hired a longtime movie industry pro to head it and set an ambitious first goal: landing the next Woody Allen flick. Taking a cue from Barcelona, the Spanish city that was the principal setting for Allen's last film, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Rio is dangling $2 million in subsidies to attract the director's as-yet-untitled next movie. This month, Rio was named the site for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, and city fathers hope it's on a roll.

House robberies: up by 27% for the year ending in March. Business robberies: up 41%. Sex crimes: up 10.1%. Carjackings: up 5%. "The crimes you fear most are on the rise," was how one South African newspaper put it. No set of numbers is more politically sensitive here than the annual crime statistics, which were due for release before the April parliamentary elections, but were delayed until last week.Police Commissioner Bheki Cele, a close ally of President Jacob Zuma, has the difficult task of turning around the nation's surging crime rate -- which affects South Africans in poor townships and informal settlements more than those in wealthy suburbs.

William J. Bratton's announcement Wednesday that he would resign as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department caught Angelenos by surprise, including the mayor and police leaders who suddenly found themselves confronted with the daunting task of replacing one of the nation's most influential law enforcement figures. Bratton's unexpected decision set in motion what promises to be an intense and wide-ranging search for his successor.