The Detective: More bigamy

At Crosstown, we examine publicly available crime report data from multiple Los Angeles County law enforcement agencies. We have a robot on the team called the Detective that scans the LAPD data for anomalies. LAPD officers tag most crime reports in their system with MO codes, for “modus operandi,” Latin for operating method or style. The MO codes are shorthand for describing what happened in a crime incident.

Here are a couple recent examples of what the Detective has found, aggregated by the robot’s human assistant, Kate Lý Johnston.

? On June 24, the Detective noticed the rare crime code 475: Theft, Coin Machine – Attempt. According to publicly available LAPD data, a suspect attempted to steal from a coin machine in North Hollywood. 

The last time attempted coin machine theft was reported to the LAPD was in January 2019, its only other occurrence this year. It was only reported five times in 2018, and four in 2017.

The key word here, though, is “attempt.” While there have been only two failed attempts this year, LAPD data show that so far, this year has seen 10 cases of successful coin machine theft. Last year there were 28 in total, making the success rate for stealing from coin machines an impressive 82%. Be careful around those machines, folks.

? In other news, bigamy is back. On June 27, the Detective noticed the crime code for bigamy, a rare occurrence in LAPD data. There have now been four reported cases of bigamy in the City of Los Angeles in 2019, and 14 in total since 2010. Before this year, the last reported case of bigamy was in 2015.

This occurrence, however, seems strange. The crime was noted as taking place in Griffith Park, and tagged with codes 1407: Bullets/Casings and 907:Narcotics (Buy-Sell-Rip), making this case seem a lot more like a drug deal than a scandalous marriage.