United States - Los Angeles

The men (and women) in blue that patrol the home of gangsta' rap are proud to announce that crime is actually down in L.A. Whether it is our videotaped beating of traffic offenders, turning thugs into music stars or putting on top-rated trials of former football heroes, L.A. must be doing something right. Total crime fell from 312,415 to 278,352 during a recent two-year period. Murders were down from 1,076 to 846. It would appear that no one has notified the 1,140 street gangs that rule the night in L.A.'s poor neighborhoods. There are an estimated 142,000 gang members in L.A.'s South Central-10,000 make their livings simply by selling crack-and the strip that connects downtown to the harbor like a digestive tract is still the most dangerous place in L.A. Apart from the 230 black and Latino gangs identified by the L.A.P.D., there are some 80 Asian gangs that specialize in burglary and carjackings. The L.A.P.D. has started issuing shotguns to its motorcycle officers to meet "the firepower carried by many criminals."

Nonetheless, there are nearly 2,000 willful homicides annually in the county, a place where folks can get away with murder. Only half of all homicide investigations result in arrests and charges. There's a conviction in only a third of the cases. In the early 1990s, murders involving gang members accounted for 38 percent of the cases. The figure is up to 45 percent today.

L.A. is also the bank robbery capital of the world. There were 1,126 of them in 1996, though down from 2,641 in 1992. Eighty percent of the heists are drug-related. Although the number has dropped, the ferocity in their execution hasn't. North Hollywood was turned into a war zone on February 28, 1997, when two gunmen in full III-A body armor, and packing AK-47s and an HK91A3 converted to full auto, took a Bank of America and then took on the LAPD. The crooks sprayed the cops with nearly 100 rounds in the Bank of America parking lot. Civilians and cops dropped like flies. Thoroughly outgunned, some of the officers sped off to a local gun shop to level the playing field. When it was all over the bad guys were dead, but not before they wounded 11 police officers and six civilians. Just to the south of L.A., in Orange County, so-called "takeover" robberies, where gunmen take customers and tellers hostage, jumped 140 percent between 1994 and 1996.

http://da.co.la.ca.us/