Submitted by LAPD Senior Lead Officer Brian Espin
Good Afternoon Everyone,
Thank you to everyone who joined me on the Hike with A Cop event ( Will Rogers State Park) on Sunday, July 31 and the Coffee With A Cop event (Estate Coffee) on Sunday, August 7. We shared great ideas and had wonderful lighthearted conversations, I truly appreciate all of the support. I plan to set up more events in the future. I wanted to pass along some interesting information regarding West Los Angeles Area auto crimes. I met with West LA Auto Detectives and was given some pretty interesting information. The following information is for all of West LA (65 sq miles).
- 50% of vehicle break-ins are vehicles left unlocked.
- Victims are still leaving property visible in their vehicles. (Lock it, Hide it, Keep it)
- 47% of vehicles taken from the street last week had their keys inside the vehicles. On average it’s usually 25% of keys left in the vehicles.
- Hyundai and Kia are the top stolen vehicles in West LA.
Security Window Film: There are many different brands and companies that make theses shatterproof window film. I recommend looking into what type works for your home. This is just another added measure to make it harder for our criminals to get to our stuff. When someone smashes a window it’s usually just one hit. The film makes it harder to smash and obviously the person has to hit the glass several times creating more noise (which they do not want).
MyLA311 app: If you have not done so already. I highly recommend downloading this app. You can generate a multitude of city services ranging from street services, Department of Sanitation and Department of Transportation. Once a service request has been made you receive notifications of the status and outcome of the request.
When calling 911 or the non-emergency line (877-275-5273), please be patient and know your location and a detailed description of the incident you are calling about. Our LAPD Dispatchers are very good at determining the nature of the response.
I encourage everyone to get a security system that will give you an instant notification if someone is on your property. This helps us (LAPD), if you can see that someone is in your house and can give a good description of the suspects. It will bump our response up to a priority call instead of a non-priority (alarm only).
If you have security cameras on your property, it is helpful for an investigation to have one or more cameras angled towards the street or sidewalk. Investigators can backtrack areas where people are seen coming from based on video footage. Hopefully, with other cameras showing vehicles or other suspects, investigators can obtain valuable information.
Please continue to secure (lock) your house and vehicles and do not leave valuables in your vehicle. Let’s make it harder for these criminals to get our stuff.
Remember to be aware of your surroundings. We can deter most crimes when we acknowledge the people around us. Most criminals do not want to be notice. You can also check crimemapping.com for daily information of crime in the area.
