Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna (right) and Mayor Robert Garcia (left) announced during a press conference Wednesday that last year the city saw the lowest murder rate in nearly 50 years. Luna also said that end-of-year data show 2017 saw a 7.1-percent decrease of overall crime when compared to 2016.
“The city of Long Beach, this last year, will have recorded the lowest number of murders in the city’s history since the late 1960s,” Garcia said.
The mayor announced that compared to 2016, statistics from 2017 showed a 33.3-percent decrease in murder rates. Twenty-two murders were recorded last year compared to the 33 cases in 2016.
“We appreciate the work that police officers do,” Garcia said. “We are very aware that every single number [recorded] is a person, and there’s a family behind those numbers. Whenever we record numbers, it’s important to know that there are real victims in these tragedies.”
City officials also said that gang-related murders in 2017 decreased by 42.1 percent from 2016. The mayor credited this decrease to enhanced gang enforcement efforts and partnerships with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the United States Department of Justice.
Garcia said that figures concerning overall crime still need to be fully processed before they will be shown to the public, but he believes the city saw a 7-percent decrease in crime.
Luna also announced that the case-clearance rates for murders in 2017 average over 80 percent.
“While our December crime stats are still being compiled, our year-to-date stats throughout November show a 7.1-percent decrease in crime citywide,” he said. “We are hopeful that this downward trend continues.”
Luna said that one-time funding for police overtime pay and restorations provided by Measure A— a Long Beach ballot initiative approved by voters as a 10-year sales tax to fund public infrastructure and public-safety services— have enhanced the ability to strategically fight crime trends in the city.
“I believe that we have the right people in key positions doing the right thing,” Luna said. “The communication and collaboration between our patrol officers and detectives, combined with relentless investigative follow-up and the use of technology, has allowed us to obtain evidence, identify suspects and quickly apprehend them.”
An increase in homicide detectives over the past few years has helped strengthen the LBPD’s ability to solve crimes and prevent some from occurring, a City press release states.
Aside from the low murder and gang-related murder rates, the police chief said that the city has seen an overall violent-crime increase in 2017, however, Luna said the true figures won’t be known until approximately a week later.
A workplace shooting incident that occurred last week, in the 300 block of East San Antonio Drive in Bixby Knolls, which resulted in two deaths and one injury, was factored into last year’s murder-rate data.
Luna said the shooter, John Alexander Mendoza, turned the firearm on himself. The victim who was killed in the shooting was recorded in the 2017 murder-rate statistic, however, Mendoza’s death was not added to that data because suicide rates are recorded in a category separate from murder.
Following the press conference, Luna told the Signal Tribune that there are new challenges this year that the police will have to face.
“A lot of people that were in jail are now out of jail and without the proper social services available,” he said. “That is never a good formula for success.”
Luna also mentioned that citywide homelessness and the legalization of recreational marijuana are two other challenges the police department will have to address in the new year.
“Those are the challenges we are going to be facing,” he said. “It’s time to roll up the sleeves and see what is next.
