NO BIG DEAL IN DECLINING HOMICIDE RATES

All the major news outlets are reporting that the rate of homicides and violent crimes in our cities have been falling for the past several years. Sorry, but that’s really no big deal!

Since homicides make up only a tiny fraction of crimes committed, a reduction in the number of just a few homicides will show up as a significant decrease in the homicide rate. Also, history has shown that homicide rates are cyclical and are hardly, if at all, impacted by police activities.

This is how the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), a police union that I admire, summarized a Los Angels Times op-ed: ‘This week's news that Los Angeles is likely to finish the year with the fewest homicides in nearly half a century should be both a source of satisfaction and a challenge to city and county policymakers. The City Council and the Board of Supervisors need to find the money to keep an adequate number of law enforcement officers on the streets for an adequate number of hours, or the gains of recent years won't be maintained.’

I hope the current financial crisis in Los Angeles will not lead to a reduction in the number of police officers, but if it does, those reductions are not likely to cause a notable increase in the number of homicides. And I hate to disappoint LAPPL, but LAPD officers probably had, at best, a negligible effect on those declining, but cyclical homicide rates.

No matter the number of cops on the street and despite the emphasis on Community Oriented Policing, our cities are bound to experience, for a duration of several years, another rise in the homicide rate, followed by another decline, etc., etc.

When I was a California law enforcement officer, my police agency was able to reduce the homicide rate, as well as the domestic violence rate, and we did it by having our patrol officers make frequent bar checks. Whenever we saw a drunk being served, we arrested the drunk, the person who served him and the bartender. As a result, the bartender often had to close the bar down for the night. Tough shit!

We were certain that the frequent bar checks resulted in fewer drunks leaving bars to drive drunk, to kick the shit out of their wives, and to kill someone in a drunken fit of rage. The time spent by our patrol officers in making those bar checks paid off in less violence and in less time investigating DWI accidents, domestic violence cases and homicides. I cannot think of anything else we did that impacted our homicide rate.

The bar owners hated us for making those bar checks, but over a period of time our patrol officers observed fewer and fewer drunks whenever they checked out those bars.

Unfortunately, most police departments do not want their officers ‘wasting’ time by making frequent bar checks. They’ll only send their patrol officers to a bar in response to a disturbance call. Their bar activities are usually limited to investigations by small vice units looking into reports of prostitution, gambling and drug violations. Too bad they don’t have the foresight to see that frequent patrol bar checks can have an impact on violent crime.