I’m Feeling Pretty Safe Downtown
I heard there was a homicide at the downtown club “Crash Mansion” on last Friday. Didn’t really surprise me as shootings happen frequently at clubs in Hollywood. Then I read the story in the Los Angeles Downtown News. One thing that stood out was that the guy that was killed was only 19 (it turns out the club was operating as “18-and-over”, which I did not know it did and actually thought about going there sometime).
But the real interesting thing was the homicide statistics quoted- in 2007 there were only 7 homicides downtown- down from 12 in 2006. I knew the numbers were low, but not that low. At my old Hermosa Beach address, there were years with no homicides, BUT there were fairly common in areas I’d venture to for dinner, etc (Gardena, Torrance, El Segundo).
I did a little searching to see more stats for downtown, and I found several different tables of crimes broken down by type; all had slightly different figures, but here is the one from the LAPD blog (which is actually a good site- check it out some…).
I think the police, from Chief Bratton down to the guys on the beat, are doing a pretty good job around here, all things considered.