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• No data on shootings, their type (if persons, buildings or vehicles hit or "no-hit" shootings) and their locations. Instead, LB's crime stats lump shootings together with other "aggravated assaults" (which can include a fight with a broken bottle or spousal abuse.) This makes it impossible to know how many shootings occurred and where they were. That's not LBPD's fault; it has the data. The reason it's not released is because, we believe, some Long Beach Councilmembers don't want the public to know how many shootings there are and where they are.

• No data on crimes by Council districts. Until 2004, LB City Hall routinely released monthly and annual crime totals and crime types by Council districts...a practice that abruptly ended entering the 2004 election cycle. So again: the reason crimes by Council district data aren't released is because, we believe, some Long Beach Councilmembers don't want their constituents to know how their Council district compares to others.

• Failure to provide user-friendly digital data: Long Beach's supposedly innovative City Hall continues to apply last century's technology, scanning pdf files of printed data, even though it almost certainly has the underlying data in digital form. This data practice makes it difficult for the public (and the press) to compare crimes by neighborhoods, which could be done in a few key strokes with digital data or an excel spreadsheet.

For these reasons, we think it may not be accurate to say that crime is "up" or "down." Conditions as experienced in some neighborhoods may be quite different than City Hall's publicly dispensed "citywide" figures. City Hall's crime stats don't disclose this, and make it needlessly hard to dig it out.

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These are among the reasons why LBREPORT.com provides cumulated maps displaying shootings geographically by Council districts (latest maps below.) We believe they show the extent to which Long Beach is a "tale of two cities"...where some neighborhoods experience conditions nearly unknown in other parts of the City. The maps below cover the period of Jan. 1, 2014 to the present, displaying the public safety records of Councilmembers Gonzalez, Price, Mungo, Uranga, Richardson (since mid-July 2014); Councilmembers Garcia (until mid-July 2014), Suja Lowenthal (exited mid-July 2016), Pearce (took office mid-July 2016), O'Donnell (exited Nov. 2014), Supernaw (arrived May 2015), Andrews and Austin, and covering the terms of Mayors Garcia (from mid-July 2014) and Foster (exited mid-July 2014.)

2014 to date: Red Xs=homicides; Blue Xs= shootings, person wounded; Brown Xs=shots fired at victim(s), not hit; Purple Xs=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. A separate map (not shown here) indicates add'l shootings in NLB.

2014 to date: Red Xs=homicides; Blue Xs= shootings, person wounded; Brown Xs=shots fired at victim(s), not hit; Purple Xs=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. A separate map (not shown here) indicates add'l shootings in Central LB.

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In addition, the release accompanying the crime data embeds a half-truth. It quotes Mayor Garcia as saying "we are hiring more police officers" but the truth is City Hall's FY17 budget added only 8 officers out of roughly 200 erased since FY10) Garcia has said he supports having LBPD officers on the Blue Line but hasn't told LB residents yet from where they'd come (although we suspect using overtime from current cops.)

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