L.A. is ranked as the retail theft capital of the country, but how big is the problem really, and what can be done to solve it? Join us for our live KNX News Town Hall, Smash and Grab, Stealing the Season, on Dec. 12.
Reports of violent crime in Los Angeles have dropped 7% in 2023. You wouldn’t know it from asking most people on the street. A recent Gallup poll ranked Los Angeles as one of the least safe major cities in the U.S., despite having one of the lowest homicide rates.
So why do so many people believe L.A. is falling into chaos and lawlessness when the opposite is true? Well, dear readers…part of that might be on us.
“It’s just too simple for me to say it’s media driven, it’s social media driven, but that happens to be the sad truth,” UCLA professor Jorja Leap told KNX News’ Charles Feldman.
Add to that the popularity of apps like Citizen and Nextdoor, which send users constant notifications about local crimes, with some of the reports unconfirmed or incorrect.
While petty theft has increased slightly year-over-year, other property crimes are down, along with violent crimes like homicides and robberies. But constant news coverage of flash mobs and smash-and-grabs paint a dire – and misleading – picture of how much crime is really going on.
So do the unfounded but widely-repeated claims that zero-bail policies are behind the nonexistent surge in robberies.
“I also think there’s the issue of people’s biases, their unconscious and conscious biases about where crime is supposed to happen and where crime is not supposed to happen,” Leap said. “You go to Watts and people will tell you it is safer, because they have lived with violent crime … You go out to the San Fernando Valley, and there's a smash and grab in Nordstrom's, and you talk to somebody in Sherman Oaks, and the world as we know it is coming to an end.”
And it’s not just about the media: politicians on both sides of the aisle play into narratives about crime, from Mayor Karen Bass’ focus on hiring hundreds more cops to former President Donald Trump’s recent claim that California is falling into “total anarchy.”
Leap says this rhetoric is based on political self-interest, not actual data.
“They want to be elected, they want to be re-elected. They want to be seen as credible,” she said. “And let's be honest, safety and public safety gets us at our most primal level.”
Leap emphasized that the levels of crime in L.A. today are nothing compared to the 1990s, when there were over a thousand murders a year – three times what we’ve seen recently.
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