Man Is Fatally Shot, Area South St./Paramount Blvd.
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(April 5, 2015, 5:55 a.m.) -- LBREPORT.com has learned that a man (adult) was fatally shot on Saturday night (April 4) in the 2700 block of E, South St. (vicinity of Paramount Blvd., border of 8th and 9th Council districts.)
Initial information is very sketchy. LBPD Public Information Officer Sgt. Megan Zabel tells LBREPORT.com that at about 10:50 p.m. on April 4, officers responded to 2700 block of South Street regarding a shooting.
When officers arrived they discovered a man (adult) down in the street with gun shot wounds. The victim was pronounced deceased at the scene.
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Red Xs=2014 and 2015 murders to date; Blue Xs=2014 and 2015 shootings, person wounded; Brown Xs=shots fired at victim(s), not hit; Purple Xs=2014 shots at occupied residence/vehicle; Green Xs=shots at unoccupied vehicle/residence; Grey Xs=shots fired (no hit, no target identified); Orange X's=non-fatal stabbings. Map is unofficial for shootings in area shown.
LBPD Homicide responded and the investigation is ongoing; we'll update this story with further as we learn it.
It's the second NLB shooting that we know about in the past two weeks (since March 21), when a man was shot and wounded just north of South St. in the 5900 block of Orange Ave. There have now been six shootings in Long Beach that we know about since March 21, four of which were in the area east of downtown or in Central Long Beach.
It's the second murder in the past month, a week after the funeral for Keshawn Brooks, a Cabrillo High student killed in West Long Beach as he walked home from school on March 12 in what prosecutors allege was a robbery committed in association with a criminal street gang.
City officials frequently say that LB crime is at 40+ year lows (using a citywide statistic), but as previously reported by LBREPORT.com, in applying for the state taxpayer funds (a grant called "My Sister's Keeper") under the CA Gang Reduction, Intervention [application obtained by LBREPORT.com using the CA Public Records Act] the City acknowledged that in 2014, gang membership in Long Beach was 12.82/1,000 people, more than twice the state average of 6.18/1,000 people.
"Although violent crime in Long Beach dropped to the lowest level over the past forty years, youth and gang violence has spiked in certain neighborhoods," the city said in its grant application, stating that "gang related murders in 2012 were up 51% and gang shootings were up 18.9% since 2011 as reported by LBPD." It added (as previously acknowledged in statements by LBPD) that "gang violence contributes to at least half of the homicides in Long Beach."
As previously reported by LBREPORT.com, in September 2014, the LB City Council voted without dissent to adopt a FY15 budget that no longer funds LBPD's now-former field anti-gang unit. Until October 2012, the unit included twenty officers plus two Sergeants, deployed in gang impacted areas where officers could interact with residents and gather intelligence. In August 2012, then-Mayor Bob Foster recommended a FY13 budget that proposed to eliminate the unit, and then-Vice Mayor Robert Garcia, chosen by Foster to chair the Council's Public Safety Committee, held no hearings on the public safety aspects of the proposed budget. However the Council balked and voted to fund half of the field anti-gang unit using "one time" funds for a year.
A year later in September 2013, again with no hearings by Garcia's Public Safety Committee on the proposed budget, the Council failed to budget additional sums for the field anti-gang unit, which LBPD scrambled to maintain at a further reduced level by drawing officers from patrol and backfilling with overtime. In July 2014, exiting Mayor Foster and entering Mayor Garcia both recommended a FY15 budget without funding for the field anti-gang unit. The Council's Public Safety Committee, now headed by Councilwoman Suzie Price (chosen by Garcia and endorsed for office by Foster) held no hearings on public safety aspoects of the Garcia-Foster proposed FY15 budget (saying such an action would be "unprecedented.") In September 2014, the Council voted without dissent to adopt a FY15 budget that provided no funding for LBPD's field anti-gang unit.
LBPD continues to maintain a conventional gang unit (often working indoors on investigations and the like) but LB no longer has the field anti-gang unit that City previously had.
