The Detective: Drunk roll

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.

?Looks like some people had too much fun on the Fourth of July.

On July 4, the Detective noticed the rare crime code 353: Drunk Roll. 

According to the most reliable resource ever, Urban Dictionary, drunk rolling is the act of taking drunk people’s wallets while they are unconscious. It seems this is a fairly accurate description of the incident, as the crime was also tagged with codes 0344: Removes Victim’s Property and 1206: Under Influence Drugs/Liquor.

The victim was a 51-year-old Hispanic male passed out on the streets of Koreatown, according to publicly available LAPD data. This is the fourth time drunk rolling has been reported to the LAPD in 2019. For all of 2018, there were only four reported cases.

Of these eight incidents in the past two years, four of them took place in Koreatown. Maybe avoid getting drunk in Koreatown for now.

?On July 5, the Detective noticed the rare crime code 830: Incest.

According to LAPD data, the incest incident took place in a Hollywood movie theatre, and involved a homeless suspect exposing themself in public. 

How this indicates incest is not entirely clear; perhaps a the homeless suspect had a relative who was subject to their public exposure, or maybe the relative also participated. I’m not sure we want to know, in this case.