Crime Statistics

As increasing numbers of American cities step up enforcement of youth curfews, more than 90% of cities surveyed find the controversial laws a useful tool for police officers, with several California cities reporting dramatic decreases in juvenile crime, according to a national report released Monday. And all 72 surveyed cities that have daytime curfews--also known as anti-truancy laws--report more children in school and fewer under arrest.

Are medical marijuana dispensaries magnets for crime? That question matters, because the assumption that such facilities are neighborhood nuisances is propelling a drive by Los Angeles and other California cities to craft regulations that limit the number of dispensaries and where they can operate. So when Rand Corp. came out with a study last month that seemed to arrive at the opposite conclusion, marijuana advocates stood up and cheered. The cheering stopped Monday, when Rand retracted the study.

After falling for more than a decade, the U.S. suicide rate has climbed steadily since 1999, driven by an alarming increase among middle-age adults, researchers said Monday. A new six-year analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the U.S. suicide rate rose to 11 per 100,000 people in 2005, from 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999, an increase of just under 5%.

A Rand Corp. study this week seemed to nip the conventional wisdom about medical marijuana dispensaries in the proverbial bud, contradicting statements from law enforcement officials that these facilities are magnets for crime. On the contrary, Rand researchers said, crime actually increased in the vicinity of hundreds of L.A. dispensaries after they were ordered to shut down. Does this mean that dispensaries decrease neighborhood crime rather than increasing it? Unfortunately, despite Rand's analysis, we still don't know the answer.

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.

Under Gov. George W. Bush, the Texas prison system has now surpassed California's to become the nation's largest, a milestone reached in large part through his administration's denial of parole to the vast majority of eligible inmates. This parole crackdown and the accompanying explosion of the prison population are causing a host of problems, but supporters and detractors alike agree that the policies of Bush's handpicked parole board are popular--and smart politics.

Re "Top Officials Welcome State Audit of City Crime Reports," April 25. As a longtime property owner in the city of San Buenaventura, I am puzzled by the space you are devoting to the issue of whether crime statistics are being accurately reported by our city's police department. I think that if you polled residents you would discover that most of us would rather have our limited police resources concentrated on preventing, investigating and solving significant crimes here in Ventura rather than counting beans--or stolen bicycles-- or some federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. DENIS HIGGINS Ventura

Reported serious crime for the first six months of 1994 and 1995 in three Ventura County cities with populations of more than 100,000: OXNARD *--* 1994 1995 Homicide 5 4 Rape 13 31 Robbery 222 210 Aggravated assault 537 598 Burglary 955 682 Theft 2,037 2,108 Car theft 542 470 Arson 47 11 Total 4,358 4,114 *--* Major crimes per 1,000 residents: 1994: 29.5 1995: 27.

City Manager James C. Hankla is recommending a change in the way Long Beach crime statistics are reported to the public and the City Council. Hankla is calling for scrapping the current system of having the Police Department provide crime statistics for each council district on a quarterly basis. It would be replaced by periodic reports noting the crime problems in particular neighborhoods.

Medical marijuana dispensaries -- with storerooms of high-priced weed, registers brimming with cash and some clientele more interested in getting high than getting well -- are often seen as magnets for crime, a perception deepened by a few high-profile murders. But a report from the Rand Corp. reaches a startling conclusion: The opposite appears to be true. In a study of crime near Los Angeles dispensaries -- which the investigators call the most rigorous independent examination of its kind -- the Santa Monica-based think tank found that crime actually increased near hundreds of pot shops after they were required to close last summer.

Battling the widespread perception that U.S. border cities have become more dangerous, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday called on public officials to stop exaggerating the violence on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico and "be honest with the people we serve. " In a speech in El Paso, Napolitano cited FBI statistics showing that violent crime rates in Southwest border counties are down 30% over the last two decades and are "among the lowest in the nation.

New York remains a prime target for terrorists nearly 10 years after the attack on the World Trade Center, but the New York Police Department is constantly refining its efforts against terrorism and has thwarted a dozen plots against the city since Sept. 11, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Tuesday. FOR THE RECORD: NYPD: In the Jan. 19 Section A, an article about the New York Police Department incorrectly said that the nonprofit Police Foundation raises $100 million a year to support NYPD programs.

The decline in violent crime in Los Angeles has been among this region's most gratifying and encouraging trends in recent years. But some have worried that the decline must inevitably level off and give way to stasis. Happily, year-end data from the Los Angeles Police Department suggest there is still progress to be made. Sociologists and criminologists once doubted that police could do much about violent crime. Violence, the theory went, was attributable to any number of social phenomena ?

For car thieves working the streets of Los Angeles County, few stretches of pavement are more attractive than the two blocks of Alondra Boulevard that run from the 605 Freeway to Studebaker Road. At least 20 vehicles were stolen there in a recent six-month period. Across town, a block of Wilcox Avenue just north of Hollywood Boulevard has been the scene of more than a dozen burglaries. And the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood , which typically sees three violent crimes a week, had a recent spike of nine assaults and robberies.

There is the world of neoconservative columnists such as The Times' Jonah Goldberg, who in an Aug. 24 column asserted that the anti-Muslim backlash is mainly a myth. Then there is the world where the rest of us live. Anyone who is witnessing the debates over the proposal to build an Islamic center in New York City has watched an unraveling of emotions across America. Muslims in America — numbering between 4 million and 7 million — have been chastised for not being sufficiently sorry for the acts of 19 hijackers on that terrible day in September 2001, or sensitive enough to the victims' families.

The death toll from the Mexican government's three-year war on drug cartels is far higher than previously reported -- more than 22,000, according to news reports published Tuesday that cited confidential government figures. The figure is significantly higher than tallies assembled by Mexican media. They estimate that more than 18,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against drug-trafficking groups after taking office in December 2006. The unofficial media tallies have often been cited by foreign news outlets, including The Times.

U.S. citizens reported losing more than $550 million in 2009 in Internet fraud, falling prey to a variety of increasingly sophisticated scams, according to a report by the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The loss was more than twice that reported in 2008, according to the agency, a partnership of the FBI and the privately funded National White Collar Crime Center. Based in West Virginia, the center tracks Internet crime around the world. "Criminals are continuing to take full advantage of the anonymity afforded them by the Internet.