Robberies down for first time in five years

Some LA neighborhoods saw increases
Crime
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Robberies in the City of Los Angeles declined by 4.5% from 2017 to 2018, the first drop since 2012. The dip mirrors the slight decrease in overall crime reports across the city.

 

 

Robbery occurs when someone takes something from another person against their will, often by force. Burglary, with which robbery is often confused, is when someone unlawfully enters a building with the intent to steal something.

 

Robberies can happen anywhere, any day and any time.

 

The most common areas where they occur, in order of likelihood, are streets, sidewalks and parking lots. Despite the notoriety of bank holdups, only 60 robberies took place in banks in 2018, making up just 0.58% of all robberies in Los Angeles last year.

 

 

Despite the fall in the total number of robberies in 2018, not all neighborhoods saw a decrease.

 

Robberies in Hollywood increased by 12.5% from 2017 to 2018. In Downtown and Florence, robberies increased by 3% and 1%, respectively.

 

The neighborhood that had the greatest percentage increase in robberies was Boyle Heights, rising by 13% from 2017 to 2018.

 

While it had a 13% decrease in robberies from 2017 to 2018, the Historic South Central neighborhood remained in the 7th highest place compared to other neighborhoods from 2017 to 2018.

 

Among the top 20 neighborhoods with the highest number of robberies last year, several of them still had notable improvements between 2017 and 2018.

  • Vermont Slauson saw a 21.5% decrease.
  • Hyde Park saw a 23% decrease.
  • Watts saw a 20.5% decrease.

 

How we did it: We looked at LAPD publicly available data on reports of robberies, including attempted robberies, in 2018. For neighborhood boundaries, we rely on the borders defined by the Los Angeles Times.  Learn more about our data here.

 

LAPD data only reflects crimes that are reported to the department, not how many crimes actually occurred. In making our calculations, we rely on the data that the LAPD makes publicly available. On occasion, LAPD may update past crime reports with new information, or recategorize past reports. Those revised reports do not always automatically become part of the public database.

 

Want to know how your neighborhood fares? Or simply just interested in our data? Email us at askus@xtown.la.