LBREPORT.com compares below LBPD citywide reported crime data from 2010 (the first full year of Mayor Foster recommended "proportional budget reductions" that reduced police levels and firefighter resources for taxpayers) with LBPD reported crime data in 2013 (the most recent full year of data available.)

The data are "citywide" crime stats. They inherently combine areas with low and high crime rates. The metric is used by federal bureaucrats but it unavoidably camouflages conditions on a local level by arithmetically combining higher crime areas with lower crime areas. "Citywide" data isn't our preferred metric but is frequently cited by city officials and political candidates. Crimes experienced by some neighborhoods in some crime categories may be higher or lower than the levels indicated below.

The data below are (necessarily) "reported" crimes; some crime categories inevitably go unreported or under-reported. To the extent City Council majorities have reduced police budgets and police staffing, residents in some neighborhoods may be less inclined to report certain types of crimes, concluding it might not be productive and/or might be unsafe to do so.

Finally, as we always do in reporting crime stats, we remind readers that each number represents a real person, real family and/or real business that became a victim in Long Beach. Although federal bureaucrats separate "crimes against persons" from "crimes against property," every crime is a crime against a person; just ask anyone who's had their home or car burglarized.

• "Part 1" (serious crimes) against persons (murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) plus serious crimes against property (res burgs, comm'l burgs, auto burgs, grand theft, auto theft, petty theft, bike theft, arson) have increased by 6.7%

• Residential burglaries have increased by 34.1%. (Except for bike thefts, every other category of property crime increased between 2010 and 2013. Federal bureaucrats lump various property crime categories together, but residential burglaries (which increased 34.1%) -- involving a criminal forcing entry into one's home with the intent to commit a felony inside -- are to most people considerably more troubling than a bike theft..

• Total violent crimes against persons (murder, manslaughter, robbery, aggravated assault, rape) have decreased by 16.6%. The aggravated assault category is a collective number that combines shootings with domestic violence/spousal battery.

• Total reported crimes (all part 1 serious crimes plus all other crimes) are basically unchanged: 0.94% lower than they were in 2010.

2010 was the first full calendar year in which budget cuts took effect that had been recommended by Mayor Foster and enacted by the Council with few dissents. The Council was comprised of Garcia, Lowenthal, DeLong, O'Donnell, Schipske, Andrews, Reyes-Uranga/Johnson (Johnson took office July 2010), Gabelich and Lerch/Neal )Neal took office in July 2010).

In Sept. 2011, Councilmembers Schipske, Neal and now-retired Gabelich dissented and presented an alternative budget, using oil revenue to avert some of the cuts. Mayor Foster opposed it and his Council majority defeated it.

In August 2012, Mayor Foster recommended a budget that, if it had been enacted as proposed, would have eliminated LBPD's field anti-gang unit (20 officers + 2 sergeants.) In Sept. 2012, on motion by Patrick O'Donnell, the Council budgeted a sum giving the Police Chief (LBPD management) discretion to fund up to half of the field anti-gang unit (10 officers + 2 sergeants) for one year. By August 2013, under questioning by Budget Oversight Committee chair DeLong, LBPD management acknowledged that roughly half of that half-level of officers were no longer in the field anti-gang unit and the unit's workload was being covered by overtime.

In the second half of 2010, Mayor Foster chose Councilman Garcia to chair the Council's Public Safety Committee. For the past two years, Garcia didn't hold meetings of his Public Safety Committee to address public safety aspects of the budgets proposed by city management and recommended by Mayor Foster. Discussions were held in the Budget Oversight Committee, chaired by Councilman DeLong and on the full Council floor.

In October 2011, Sacramento implemented "realignment" of state prison responsibilities, a measure proposed by Governor Jerry Brown and enacted by the state legislature (AB 109) to begin addressing a federal court order to reduce state prison overcrowding. Sacramento now sends what it deems certain "non-violent, non-serious, and non sex offenders" to serve their sentences in County jails. In Los Angeles County, jail overcrowding has led to paroling some former state prison felons onto the streets.