Crime in Los Angeles

Crime in Los Angeles has varied throughout time, reaching a peak between the 1970s and 1990s.

In 2012, the Los Angeles Police Department reported that crime had declined in the city for the 10th consecutive year. In 2013, Los Angeles reported 296 homicides in the city proper, which corresponds to a rate of 6.3 per 100,000 population—a notable decrease from 1980, when the all time homicide rate of 34.2 per 100,000 population was reported for the year.

In 2014, there were 260 homicides, at a rate of 6.7 per 100,000 people.

In 2015, it was revealed that the LAPD had been under-reporting crime for eight years, making the crime rate in the city appear much lower than it really is. Approximately 14,000 assaults went unreported as "minor offenses" rather than violent crimes. Additionally, recent years have seen increased crime in the city.

The city is patrolled by the Los Angeles Police Department.

A series of murders that occurred on March 18, 1936 in the Los Angeles, Lincoln Heights area. An equal rights meeting led by both illegal and legalized foreign aliens, mostly Latino and Italian, were met with force by the LAPD under the order of Frank L. Shaw. Rather than disband the rally, the LAPD brutalized them, spilling blood on the streets of Griffin, Mozart, Car, and Baldwin. Thirty-three protesters were injured, nineteen dead, five LAPD officers were recorded wounded, with one dead. While many of the deaths and injuries fell onto the equal rights protesters, there was an unnamed casualty at the time in order to cover the law-breaking of the police force. Sandra Vespucci, an Italian youth living on Baldwin street at the time, was killed by a stray bullet in front of her home. Shortly after the bloodshed, many of the officers involved were forced to resign by Mayor Shaw.

During the early 1930s-late 1940s, organized crime in Los Angeles and Las Vegas was ruled by Jewish-American mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and his crime family. He even controlled the Mafia crime family in the city.

After Siegel's murder on June 20, 1947, his lieutenants Mickey Cohen and Jack Dragna began a turf war for control of his former territories. The war lasted nine years. Many mobsters were killed during the war, particularly on Cohen's side. Several other Mafia families backed Cohen and Dragna. In 1956, Dragna died and Cohen won the war.