For LA burglaries, Tarzana now takes top spot

Hancock Park, Cheviot Hills decline, Valley gets more break ins
Crime
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The City of Los Angeles recorded 3,386 burglaries and attempted burglaries in the first quarter of 2019 — a decrease of about 13% from the same period last year.

 

 

But the some of the hotspots for break-ins have shifted.

 

In 2018, wealthy enclaves like Hancock Park and Cheviot Hills had the highest burglary rates in the city. However, in the first quarter of this year, they saw a substantial decrease. Instead, the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods of Tarzana and Toluca Lake experienced a wave of burglaries, pushing them into the top spots.

 

 

Tarzana, in fact, reported 95 burglaries during the first three months, compared with 67 for the same period last year — an increase of 42%. That gives it a burglary rate (number of break-ins per 100,000 residents) of 251.7, the highest in the city.

 

 

Daryl Scoggins, Los Angeles Police Department’s senior lead officer for Tarzana said that, in light of this recent spike, police have started deploying officers on bicycles and requested additional support from police choppers to keep watch over the area.

 

Second in the rankings for the first quarter, with a rate of 239.3, is Toluca Lake, a neighborhood at the eastern edge of the San Fernando Valley which has seen an 83% increase in burglaries from the same time last year.

 

The LAPD’s Scoggins said that police are now deploying a variety of techniques to address the rise.

 

“We have community members out working with the police as eyes and ears, gathering information to bring back to detectives,” he said. “We also utilize undercover officers in unmarked vehicles to be in the community where the burglaries are occurring.”

 

Scoggins also said that the West Valley Division, under whose jurisdiction Tarzana falls, has increased patrols in the areas where burglaries are occurring. It has also begun deploying officers to so-called “PredPol” hotspots. PredPol is a software that analyzes date, time and type of property crime and churns out “hotspots,” or places, where a crime is most likely to occur.

 

There have been improvements in some neighborhoods, such as Hancock Park, Hollywood Hills and Vermont Slauson, where burglaries have gone down this year.

Hancock Park, for instance, reported 15 burglaries in the first quarter of this year, compared with 29 for the same period in 2018. Last year it also had the highest annual burglary rate.

 

Peter Gorelick of the Hancock Park Homeowners Association, however, was cautious.

 

“We’ve had an improvement from last year but it can change at any time,” he said. “We are a target — a rich area with very nice homes and cars.”

 

Gorelick said most homes in the area have alarm systems and cameras. Some residents even pay for private security, he said.

 

Here are the ten neighborhoods with the highest burglary rates in the first quarter of 2019:

 

 

How we did it: We looked at publicly available LAPD data on reports of burglary and attempted burglary in Los Angeles. 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. 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.