DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Each week Captain Blake Chow, Commanding Officer of LAPD's Central Division, sends out an email to the community. Captain Chow has agreed to let blogdowntown bring his emails to our readers.

As of May23 , 2009 Central reported the following crime numbers. All numbers are YTD unless otherwise noted.

• Violent Crime up 13 percent. (or 50 crimes more than last year)
• Homicides are up 100 percent (2 vs 1)
• Rapes are down 16 percent
• Robbery is up 11 percent ( 18 more than last year or .85 per week )
• Agg Assaults are up 18 percent (60 more than last year or 1.8 per week)
• Total Violent Crime is up only 50 crimes from last year.

There are no patterns with respect to violent crime this week.

Robberies were spread out and most were strong armed robberies.

• Property Crime is down 11 percent
• Burglary is down 25 percent
• Grand Theft Auto is down 15 percent
• Burgl from Motor vehicle is down 9 percent
• Personal Theft is down 18 percent

The big crime number for property crime has been personal thefts. Our typical top locations have been Macy's where we handle on the average 4-5 shop lifting arrests per week. Other thefts have been spread out and in different locations.

Total Part I Crimes are down 5 percent for the division. Downtown still has the lowest total numbers or crime in the City. We have been averaging about 70 crimes per week. The same weekly average from 2006 (post SCI), 2007 and 2008. Any small numerical increase lead to large percentage jumps because of the small numbers of total crime. We are showing over 100 less crimes this year than the nearest Division.

OTHER

On Memorial Day, Central Officers took turns running the LA Marathon. Twenty six children with cancer ran one mile legs in the marathon through the Sunshine Kids organization. Our last leg was run with a 7 year old boy that had just had chemotherapy the day before. All officers, Chief Bratton, and the kids met at Wilshire and Flower and crossed the finish line together. After the race, all the kids were transported to Parker Center, where they had food, video games, jumpers and the Chief presented medals to them.

Lastly

The community survey is still available. This is now available on our CPAB Website for those that wish to still complete it.

The web address is:

http://centralcpab.org/

EVENTS

Next CPAB meeting is on June 16, 2009. If you have not been to a meeting please come to visit one and learn about Central. Come and meet your Senior Lead Officers.

Please join us on the CCEA Skid Row walk on Wed June 3rd at 6pm. Come meet the community members, organization and LAPD people that work to keep skid row safe.

Captain III Blake Chow
Commanding Officer
LAPD Central Area
213-972-1289