A steep drop in crime, but do you feel safer? [View all]

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Los Angeles police block off the 3rd Street tunnel after a man was shot there in October last year. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

L.A. had fewer crimes last year than it did in 1957 — the mayor calls the numbers 'mind-boggling' — but the statistics may not be equally reassuring to everyone.
By Sandy Banks
January 7, 2012

A newsroom has its own way of tracking a city's trend toward diminishing crime.

Twenty years ago, a reporter tallying crime stats for our newspaper's weekly blotter might sift through dozens of killings on a single weekend. There were more than 1,000 homicides a year. Last year, there were fewer than 300 homicides — and many weekends with no killings.

Ten years ago, reporters working the streets kept mental lists of neighborhoods considered too dangerous to visit alone. Now, no neighborhood is off-limits. That sense of ambient criminal menace is gone.

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The reasons are complicated and ripe for debate: better policing and more community involvement; fewer drugs and fuller prisons; an explosion in new technology; and the fading profile of violent gangs.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-20120107,0,6414204.column