Dozens of the nation’s biggest cities saw drops in violent crime in the first half of 2024, newly released statistics show, though the Southern California cities surveyed, including Long Beach and Los Angeles, didn’t fare as well.
The preliminary statistics from the survey of 69 law enforcement agencies by the Major Cities Chiefs Association compared the number of violent crimes in several categories from Jan. 1 through June 30 this year to the same time period last year.
It found reports of violent crime decreased in most cities, including homicides, with 3,124 in the first half of the year, compared with 3,783 in 2023. Reports of rape, robbery and aggravated assaults also declined in most cities, the survey shows.
But some places bucked that trend. In Southern California, three law enforcement agencies were surveyed – the Long Beach and Los Angeles police departments and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department – and they each reported mixed year-over-year results.
In Long Beach, homicide numbers rose, with the city’s police department reporting 12 homicides in the first six months of 2023 and 19 so far this year.
The department also reported a sharp rise in robberies — a 35% increase over 2023 data — and a 7% increase in rapes, according to the survey. Aggravated assaults fell 7.4% in Long Beach this year compared to the same time in 2023, according to the survey.
After seeing the increase in crime, Long Beach police said they increased their focus on recovering illegal firearms and using “proactive enforcement action.”
The department created a High Crime Focus Team of 12 officers meant to help patrol officers reduce crime around the city. Police are also looking to modify their operations and reallocate resources to support proactive crime prevention efforts.
Looking back at mid-year reports through 2020, crime data for Long Beach fluctuated and didn’t often show a clear pattern, but aggravated assaults rose or stayed about the same from 2021 through 2023 before falling in 2024.
Both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported increases in robberies so far this year, according to the survey, which relies on agencies to voluntarily report their crime stats.
Police reported an 8.8% increase in robberies since last year, and the sheriff’s department reported a 10.2% increase.
In 2022, LAPD reported rises in violent crime across all four categories, and numbers fell by the 2023 mid-year report.
Commander Brandon Dean, a spokesman for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, said they’ve seen more people entering stores with the intent to steal. When those suspects are confronted by an employee, witness or someone else, they’ve used force before fleeing, upgrading the charge from theft to a robbery.
The department also works with the district attorney’s office and federal agencies to prosecute gun-related cases. Dean said that work helped reduce the number of reported assaults, and the department also hopes it will cut down on armed robberies.
The sheriff’s department also reported a drop in homicides, with 78 so far this year compared to 91 at the same time last year. Midyear homicide numbers remained the same in Los Angeles, with 155 killings recorded by June 30 of 2023 and 2024.
The sheriff’s department has seen an increase in robberies in each mid-year report since it began reporting data to the survey in 2022. Homicides and rapes have decreased each year since 2022. And after rising in 2022, aggravated assaults dropped in 2023 and 2024 so far.
Addressing the decreasing reports of crime nationwide, U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement Monday that “the updated data comes in the wake of last year’s historic drop in homicides nationwide and one of the lowest levels of violent crime in 50 years.”
Garland credited the figures in part to the Justice Department’s strategy to form partnerships with various federal agencies, and state and local law enforcement, in combatting crime.
