Police Bureaus
U.S. Census Bureau. (1990). United States Census. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2000). United States Census. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). United States Census. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2020). United States Census. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Sampson, R. J. (2012). Won’t you be my neighbor? Race, class, and residence in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Contexts, 11(4), 24-31. doi:10.1177/1536504212463304
Los Angeles Police Department. (n.d.). LAPD Organization Chart. Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://www.lapdonline.org/lapd-organization-chart/
Race & Injustice
U.S. Census Bureau. (2000). United States Census. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). United States Census. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2020). United States Census. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2023, March 8). Peña Nieto and the return of PRI rule. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/place/Mexico/Pena-Nieto-and-the-return-of-PRI-rule
Teaching American History. (n.d.). Letter from Bonus Army leader to President Hoover. Retrieved from https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-from-bonus-army-leader-to-president-hoover/
American Heritage Center. (n.d.). Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Retrieved from https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/incarceration-japanese-americans-during-world-war-ii/
KCET. (2022, April 25). Los Angeles 1943: The war on the zoot suit. Retrieved from https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/los-angeles-1943-war-on-the-zoot-suit
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2023, March 8). Watts Riots of 1965. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/event/Watts-Riots-of-1965
Smithsonian Magazine. (2022, March 8). Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination sparked uprisings in cities across America. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/martin-luther-king-jrs-assassination-sparked-uprisings-cities-across-america-180968665/
NPR. (2017, April 26). When LA erupted in anger: A look back at the Rodney King riots. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/524744989/when-la-erupted-in-anger-a-look-back-at-the-rodney-king-riots
The Guardian. (2017, January 17). Black Lives Matter: The birth of a movement. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/black-lives-matter-birth-of-a-movement
History.com. (2022, May 25). This day in history: George Floyd killed by police officer. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/george-floyd-killed-by-police-officer
Los Angeles Times. (2022, June 28). Anti-Asian hate crimes in California jumped 177% in 2021. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-28/anti-asian-hate-crimes-in-california-jumped-177-in-2021
Economics
Deverell, W., & Hise, G. (Eds.). (2010). A companion to Los Angeles. Wiley-Blackwell.
Davis, M. (1990). Los Angeles and the problem of the city. New Left Review, 186, 3–28. doi:10.1086/455115
Myers, D. N., Ferdman, M., & Park, T. (2021). The making of a crisis: A history of homelessness in Los Angeles. Luskin Center for History and Policy, University of California, Los Angeles. Retrieved from https://luskincenter.history.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2021/01/LCHP-The-Making-of-A-Crisis-Report.pdf
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. (2020). 2000-2018 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count Data Summary: Total Point-in-Time Homeless Population by Geographic Areas. Retrieved from https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=2000-2018-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count-data-summary-total-point-in-time-homeless-population-by-geographic-areas.pdf
Los Angeles Almanac. (2023, March 8). Employment in Los Angeles County. Retrieved from https://www.laalmanac.com/employment/em12c.php
Crime Before and After COVID-19
Anderberg, D., Rainer, H., & Siuda, F. (2022). Quantifying domestic violence in times of crisis: An internet search activity‐based measure for the COVID‐19 pandemic. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 185(2), 498-518.
Jeffrey Brantingham, P., Tita, G. E., & Mohler, G. (2021). Gang‐related crime in Los Angeles remained stable following COVID‐19 social distancing orders. Criminology & Public Policy, 20(3), 423-436.
Abrams, D. S. (2021). COVID and crime: An early empirical look. Journal of Public Economics, 194, 104344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104344
Procter, R. (2021, March 4). Remember when? Timeline marks key events in California’s year-long pandemic grind. CalMatters
Deep Dive On Types Of Crime
Campedelli, G. M., Aziani, A., & Favarin, S. (2021). Exploring the immediate effects of COVID-19 containment policies on crime: An empirical analysis of the short-term aftermath in Los Angeles. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 46(5), 704-727.
Jeffrey Brantingham, P., Tita, G. E., & Mohler, G. (2021). Gang‐related crime in Los Angeles
remained stable following COVID‐19 social distancing orders. Criminology & Public Policy, 20(3), 423-436.
Miller, A. R., Segal, C., & Spencer, M. K. (2020). Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic violence in Los Angeles (No. w28068). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Exploring the Crime in the 21 LAPD Divisions
Socioeconomic Dive in the Two Extremes
Borofsky, L. A., Kellerman, I., Baucom, B., Oliver, P. H., & Margolin, G. (2013). Community violence exposures and adolescents’ school engagement and academic achievement over time. Psychology of Violence, 3, 1-15. doi:10.1037/a0034121
Annotated Bibliography
Boggess, L. N., & Hipp, J. R. (2010). Violent Crime, Residential Instability and Mobility: Does the Relationship Differ in Minority Neighborhoods? Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 26(3), 351–370.
This article by Boggess and Hipp explores the differences in the relationship between violent crime, residential instability and mobility with respect to minority and non-minority neighborhoods. The study is an attempt to find if there are or aren’t difference in this relationship when it comes to comparing the two neighborhood types. It uses data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey to test their thesis – this dataset is useful as it comprises of a large and representative sample. Boggess and Hipp conclude that while residential instability has a positive relationship with violent crime, the relationship is weaker in minority versus non-minority neighborhoods. They theorize as a conclusion that social disorganization theory in sociology may not explain crime in minority neighborhoods. This resource is important as it gives us a theoretical basis off which to look at neighborhoods and crime in LA with relation to their socioeconomic status. It will help us control for biases that would otherwise have us assume why or why not minority neighborhoods suffer from increased crime rates in LA.
Boman, J. H., & Gallupe, O. (2020). Has COVID-19 changed crime? Crime rates in the United
States during the pandemic. American journal of criminal justice, 45, 537-545.
This article from the American Journal of Criminal Justice discusses whether or not the changes within our country during the COVID-19 pandemic have changed crime rates and crime trends in the positive or negative direction. The importance of this article is how it highlights that the amount of crime within the United States has, in fact, gone down as a result of the pandemic. It does, however, highlight how several different specific types of crime have tended to increase, most likely due to the changes that may have impacted different psychological trends in America. This article is important to our thesis because we wish to see the impact of COVID-19 on the amount of crime in Los Angeles, and generalizing the data to all of the United States allows us to see the differences that may lie specifically to Los Angeles.
California Policy Lab. (2021). Crime in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://www.capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Crime-in-California-During-the-Covid-19-Pandemic.pdf
This is a comprehensive report from the California Policy Lab (CPL) that gives us a view into the impact of COVID-19 on California’s crime rates. The report covers the majority of our project timeline from 2019 to June 2021. CPL gets its data from the California Department of Justice monthly incident reports and the FBI’s Crime Reporting Program. It analyzes how COVID related factors such as unemployment rates, etc. affected crime rates. What is special about this report is that it also suggests policy changes and state interventions that may control for crime rates increasing. This could be helpful for our project as we can be inspired to create our own solutions that may address crime specifically in LA using the same methodology presented here in this report. This resource will also allow us to compare how and why crime may have differed in different California cities other than Los Angeles.
Campedelli, G. M., Aziani, A., & Favarin, S. (2021). Exploring the immediate effects of COVID-19 containment policies on crime: An empirical analysis of the short-term aftermath in Los Angeles. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 46(5), 704-727.
The article “Exploring the immediate effects of COVID-19 containment policies on crime: An empirical analysis of the short-term aftermath in Los Angeles” examines the immediate impact of COVID-19 containment policies on crime in Los Angeles based on data collected from 2017-2020 and nice crime categories including burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, intimate partner assault, and homicide. The authors found that there was an immediate drop in instrumental and serious crimes after the adoption of social distancing policies. The reduction in crime rates was temporary, with crime rates returning to pre-pandemic levels after the stay-at-home order was lifted. This source is important because it provides a detailed analysis model to compare crime rates in different time periods – before and after the social distancing policies. Our team can definitely take similar methods to see the general trends of violent crimes in Los Angeles during the pandemic – whether they changed as people get used to the stay-at-home order.
Comandon, & Ong, P. (2020). South Los Angeles Since the 1960s: Race, Place, and Class. The Review of Black Political Economy, 47(1), 50–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/0034644619873105
This is an article written by Andre Comandon and Paul Ong which are both faculty of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and it analyzes data about the racial and economic status of Los Angeles, specifically of South (Central) Los Angeles. This resource is important because from what we have already seen in our data set, South Los Angeles has the most crimes from January 1, 2020 to today. By having this source, we can further corroborate the intersection between racial and economic statuses of South Los Angeles with our crime data. Also, it analyzes these patterns in the course of multiple years, so we can learn from this and find patterns in our data set as well. And additionally, it provides interesting data visualizations that we could take inspiration from.
Jeffrey Brantingham, P., Tita, G. E., & Mohler, G. (2021). Gang‐related crime in Los Angeles
remained stable following COVID‐19 social distancing orders. Criminology & Public Policy, 20(3), 423-436.
The article “Gang‐related crime in Los Angeles remained stable following COVID‐19 social distancing orders” analyzes the effects of COVID-19 social distancing orders on gang-related crime rates in Los Angeles. The authors first predict that gangs would ignore social distancing requirements during the pandemic under the stress of social and cultural stress. Yet, through their research, they conclude that while the pandemic may have led to changes in the broader social and economic context that could impact crime rates, there was no significant effect on gang-related crime specifically. This source is important because it is relevant to our research topic that addresses the issue of how COVID-19 has influenced crime rates in Los Angeles, specifically with regards to gang-related crime, a kind of violent crime. Moreover it provides a new perspective into how the pandemic has affected crime rates: it sheds some light on the possibility that the pandemic may have less effects than our team thought.
Kyriacou, D. N., Hutson, H. R., Anglin, D., Peek-Asa, C., & Kraus, J. F. (1999). The relationship
between socioeconomic factors and gang violence in the city of Los Angeles. Journal of
Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 46(2), 334-339.
This article discusses street gang violence in Los Angeles and relates it to the community-level socioeconomic factors within the city. It utilizes statistics such as log mean per capita income, proportion employed, proportion male, etc. in order to classify different socioeconomic factors throughout Los Angeles. The resource is important because it explains to the readers why gang-related homicides may have been increasing over the last couple of decades, whether it be from epidemic proportions in Los Angeles or from the lack of support towards specific ethnicity groups. It relates to our overall thesis because one of the thesis questions that we are looking to do research on deals with the relationship between crime rate and the socioeconomic status of the different regions within LA county.
MacDonald, Mohler, G., & Brantingham, P. J. (2022). Association between race, shooting hot spots, and the surge in gun violence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles. Preventive Medicine, 165(Pt A), 107241–107241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107241
This is an article written by John MacDonald (University of Pennsylvania), George Mohler (Boston College), and P. Jeffrey Brantingham (UCLA) about the intersection of race and, more specifically, gun violence. This resource is pertinent to our research because this examines the same thing as our research question, but it expands upon it and poses the same question to two other metropolitan cities, New York City and Philadelphia. By having this source, we can compare the patterns we find in our data with other cities and make further connections with other environmental factors that can contribute to gun violence (which is discussed here). More importantly, it specifically labels how Hispanic and Black populations are disproportionately at risk for gun violence. This is an important observation to make because, as of today (according to the US Census), the population of Los Angeles is 48.8% “Hispanic, or Latino.”
Miller, A. R., Segal, C., & Spencer, M. K. (2020). Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic violence in Los Angeles (No. w28068). National Bureau of Economic Research.
The article “Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Domestic Violence in Los Angeles” examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic violence rates in Los Angeles. The authors analyzed domestic violence police reports from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and found a significant increase in domestic violence incidents following the social distancing policy and stay-at-home orders issued in response to the pandemic. They also revealed that the increase in incidents involving a weapon and for incidents occurring in public places. This source is important because it provides evidence on a significant relationship between covid-19 regulations and a specific type of crime – domestic violence, which is usually a concern for policymakers and advocates. Our team thus maybe should find the type of crimes that are highly influenced by the pandemic and compare them with those receiving little impact.
Mohler, G., Bertozzi, A. L., Carter, J., Short, M. B., Sledge, D., Tita, G. E., … & Brantingham, P.
J. (2020). Impact of social distancing during COVID-19 pandemic on crime in Los
Angeles and Indianapolis. Journal of criminal justice, 68, 101692.
This is an article from the Journal of Criminal Justice, Volume 68. It discusses the massive impact of COVID-19 and social distancing on the crime in Los Angeles and Indianapolis, an impact that was almost an immediate effect of the pandemic. The resource is important because we want to be able to study the impact that the pandemic had, not only on the number of crimes, but on the type of crime. The article discusses how the amount of burglary and robbery of self-owned businesses may have decreased due to overprotection of people’s personal space, while crimes such as domestic violence may have increased during the pandemic. If this article aligns with our thesis, the data from our dataset should be able to match this statement.
Murray, G. R., & Davies, K. (2022). Assessing the Effects of COVID-19-Related Stay-at-Home Orders on Homicide Rates in Selected U.S. Cities. Homicide Studies, 26(4), 419–444. https://doi.org/10.1177/10887679221108875
This article by Murrary and Davies examines the impact of COVID-19 quarantine orders (stay-at-home orders) on the homicide rates of major U.S. cities such as Los Angeles. The study utilizes a variety of different data sets such as crime data from police departments of each city and state health department reports. It was completed by reputable professors from Texas State University and published in Homicide Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal. The study concluded that stay-at-home orders resulted in a decrease in homicide rates nationwide. For our study, it would be interesting to see if this was the case for the city of Los Angeles. Also, if it is true, can we see different relationships with regard to other crime such as domestic violence. By understanding nationwide statistics and precedent, we can narrow down which data may be more or less interesting to us in terms of contributing something new to existing literature.
Wang, Davies, G., & Ready, J. (2019). Race, Ethnicity, and Perceived Minority Police Presence: Examining Perceptions of Criminal Injustice Among Los Angeles Residents. Law & Society Review, 53(3), 706–739. https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12423
This is an article written by Xia Wang (Arizona State University), Justin Ready (Griffith University), and Garth Davies (Simon Fraser University) investigates the relationship between race, ethnicity, and the perceived presence of police in minority communities in Los Angeles. This resource is useful to our research because it examines the relationship between race, ethnicity, and perceptions of police presence, which is a key factor in understanding how crime and law enforcement patterns vary across neighborhoods. More specifically, it involves demographics in the discussion of equity and justice within the criminal justice system which is a topic that we specifically want to bring up in the analysis of our data set. And finally, it takes a quantitative approach in its analysis by using statistical methods to come to a conclusion which provides a good balance to all the more “humanistic” articles that we have found.
Short. (1997). Poverty, ethnicity, and violent crime / James F. Short. WestviewPress.
“Poverty, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime” is a book written by James F. Short, Jr. that explores the relationship between poverty, ethnicity, and violent crime. In relation to our data and research, we are looking at violent crimes that circuit in them Los Angeles area around the year of 2020-2023 until now. Short argues that poverty, ethnicity, and crime are closely linked to each other when looking in relation to violent crime. This is important to note because the Los Angeles area is very large and is known to have common conceptions that certain areas are more dangerous due to factors related to poverty, income, and displacement. This book in particular poses a great question within or space, because covid affected people’s income stabilities, how can this relation to crime patterns. Short discusses the historical context of poverty and crime that has been reinforced through socioeconomic inequalities. I focused on the topics of levels of explanation of violent behavior, community and neighborhood contexts of violent crime, explaining violent crime and individual level of explanation, and explaining violence in social contexts. Violent behavior is explained in different forms: macrosocial, microsocial, individual psychosocial, and biological. Within these are subsets of circumstances and examples that categorize violent insinuations into certain groups. For example, social predisposing aspects like gangs, poverty, family disorganizations, etc. Whilst there can be situational occurrences for violence such as routine activities or access to arms. And lastly, can be categorized based on activation, which relies on impulse or catalytic social events. Violent behaviors are very convoluted, but this provides a structure to understand a basis. It goes on to describe in detail the different types of violent crimes that occur and how it fits into an umbrella term. With community and neighborhood contexts of violent crime, we view this under macro social contexts in which discusses crime within economic status, ethnicity, and residential mobility. Due to this, Short argues that these marginalizations contribute to social disorganization and higher rates of violent crime. However, Short also examines the role of collective efficacy in preventing violent crime. Collective efficacy refers to the capacity of a community to come together and take action to address social problems and maintain social order. Within this, there are clear racial composition in communities that note vastly different crime rates. When looking at the macrosocial level in general, the socioeconomic factors on a national, even global, scale have large effects on crime patterns. Looking at this we see these larger structures and how in turn this shapes individuals. Factors like globalization, political and economic instability, and values can impact crime. Through globalization and in the case of Los Angeles, gentrification, displacement and the breakdown of social institutions can create an environment in which violent crime is more likely to occur. Overall, Short suggests that in addressing violent crime, we need to focus on addressing the structural factors that lead to poverty and emphasizing social and economic equality can help to reduce crime rates among marginalized groups. This resource provides as a basis on historical and social context of violent crime and can address answers dependent on the areas in which violent crime occurs the most in different parts of Los Angeles.
Thank you for reading!
