October means Halloween celebrations, and lots of complaints to police
October means Halloween. Halloween means Halloween parties. And in Los Angeles, Halloween parties mean a preponderance of complaints about noisy celebrations that last into the early morning hours and anger neighbors.
How bad is it? According to publicly available Los Angeles Police Department data, in the last two years parties on the weekend before Halloween generated more complaints than any other time of year in the city.
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In 2023, Halloween fell on a Tuesday. On Saturday, Oct. 28, there were 202 police responses to a party. The next day there were 169.
Those were the two days with the highest dispatch volume in the entire year. The next-highest count was the 157 reports on both May 17 and a month later, on June 18.
Christmas brought the sixth-highest daily count last year.
In all, the Oct. 28-29 weekend generated 371 police responses. That is 26% more than the second most troublesome weekend, of May 27-28—right before Memorial Day—when the LAPD reported dispatching officers 294 times.
As with all weekend party calls, some of the Saturday or Sunday responses could have been tied to events that began the previous evening. Additionally, these are unrelated to any LAPD response to an actual crime or violent incident happening at a party.
Multi-year problem
The situation was similar in 2022. That year, Halloween fell on a Monday. The peak weekend was Oct. 29-30, when police were dispatched a total of 410 times.
As in 2023, there were many responses in May and June, when numerous graduation or end-of-school parties occur. In fact, on three different weekends in May, there were 350 or more party responses.
In 2022, the weekend after Valentine’s Day was also busy for the LAPD: On Saturday-Sunday, Feb. 19-20, there were a total of 339 party reports.
Altogether, the highest monthly call volume since 2022 occurred in May of that year, with 2,184 reports.
This May police were dispatched 1,252 times. It’s impossible to know if there were fewer parties, or simply fewer people complaining, possibly because they believe that nothing will be done.
Angelenos are advised not to use 911 to report a loud party, and instead to dial the non-emergency number 877-ASK-LAPD, even if you have to wait on hold.
Working for the weekend
Loud parties in Los Angeles are nothing new. Some are youth-fueled gatherings. Others are party houses, sometimes in Airbnbs that can be advertised on social media and attract hundreds of people who pay entrance fees. That happened this year when squatters took over a Beverly Crest mansion.
The city of Los Angeles in 2018 passed a party-house ordinance that defines what constitutes a “loud or unruly gathering.” These are noted on the website of Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, whose District 13 covers Hollywood, long a site of raucous happenings. The roster includes everything from excessive noise and obstructing streets to public urination.
As referenced above, the vast majority of calls are made on weekends. Breaking down when complaints happen by day of the week results in a graph that resembles a big smile, with more than 2,700 reports this year each on Saturday and Sunday.
How we did it: We examined data on LAPD calls for service involving parties from Jan. 1, 2020–Aug. 31, 2024. Service calls are a record of police activity that are initiated either from calls coming into 911 and other numbers, or situations officers respond to while on patrol.
Interested in our data or have questions? Email askus@xtown.la.
