(July 1, 2015, 11:00 a.m.) -- LBREPORT.com reports below the number of murders and non-fatal shootings by Council districts from Jan 1, 2015 through June 30, 2015.

The results show -- as LBREPORT.com has previously reported -- that Long Beach remains a "tale of two cities"...some areas with the best of times, and others with the worst of times.

Long Beach politicians frequently cite citywide crime statistics...but these combine the city's low crime and higher crime areas and may or may not reflect real-world conditions in various neighborhoods. Within higher crime areas, families and neighborhood businesses may regularly encounter crime scene tape, sirens, hovering helicopters and blocked streets for shooting investigations...conditions that other parts of Long Beach rarely if ever experience.

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Until 2004, the City routinely released crime stats for all major crime categories by Council districts. That abruptly ended under the O'Neill administration leading into the 2004 city election cycle and was never resumed. Today, the City routinely issues releases for all homicides/murders from which one can determine the Council district affected. However, the City doesn't routinely release data on non-fatal shootings. Under federal bureaucratic crime reporting rules, shootings are included within the category of "aggravated assaults" (which includes domestic violence, bar fights and some other crimes.) Long Beach City Hall could release shooting data separately (as L.A. does) but it doesn't. LBREPORT.com reports each shooting as we learn about it (hit, no-hit, vehicle or residence struck) after we confirm the information with LBPD; based on its location, we report the Council district affected.

As we always caution readers to remember with crime statistics: every number refers to a real person with real family and real friends.

Murders:

• (1) Long Beach had five murders in June, but the total number of murders thus far in 2015 is down from 2014 and down significantly from 2013. LB has had 11 murders thus far in 2015, compared to 14 murders by this time in 2014...and 24 murders by this time in 2013. The 11 murders in 2015 don't include the store clerk shot in March 2014 (area 7th St/Cerritos Ave./2nd district) who died from his wounds in May 2015. Also not included is the kidnapping of 3 month old Eliza De La Cruz from her 8th district home, which ended with her murder in the San Diego area.

• (2) 2015 murders to date were mainly in Council districts 1 (which had 3 of them) and district 8 which had 3 murders (one was on Si=outh St. at the 9th district border.) The 9th Council district had no murders in the first six months of 2015.

• (3)In ELB and SE LB, Council district 3 had no homicides/murders. District 5 had one spousal murder/suicide. District 4 had the first murder of the year but (like non-fatal shootings we report below), they're concentrated in the western part of the district; areas to the east including Los Altos had none of these crimes.

• (4) Cal Hts/Bixby Knolls (neighborhoods "south of the RR tracks" and north of the 405 freeway) had no murders.

Non-fatal shootings In the first six months of 2015, Council district 1 had six non-fatal shootings (7 if one counts a shooting on the border of district 2). District 9 had 6 non-fatal shootings. District 6 had 4 non-fatal shootings (5 if one counts a shooting on the border of district 4.)

Districts 3 and 5 had none.

We can't say with numerical certainty if non-fatal shootings are up, or down, or roughly the same as in previous years because we don't have total shootings with precision (we report shootings as we learn of them.) With that caveat, we report the data that we have: .

LBPD has indicated that the majority of LB's shootings (fatal and non-fatal) are gang related or under investigation as gang related.

In Sept. 2014, a Council majority approved without dissent, a FY15 budget (recommended by both current Mayor Garcia and exiting Mayor Foster) that no longer funds LBPD's now-former field anti-gang unit. The field anti-gang unit previously deployed twenty officers plus two sergeants in gang impacted areas where they could interact with residents and gather intelligence. LBPD continues to maintain a conventional gang unit (often working indoors on investigations and the like) but L.A. County's second largest city no longer has the field anti-gang unit that LB taxpayers had until September 2012.

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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 Foster 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.

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In July-August 2014, the Council's Public Safety Committee, now headed by Councilwoman Suzie Price (chosen as chair by Garcia) held no hearings on public safety aspects of the Garcia-Foster proposed FY15 budget. Price said such an action would be "unprecedented." In September 2014, the Council voted without dissent to adopt the FY15 budget that provided no funding for LBPD's field anti-gang unit.

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Following our initial webposting, LBREPORT.com updated the text above to reflect:
The kidnapping of Eliza De La Cruz was from the 8th dist., not the 9th dist.
The 9th district had no murders in the first six months of 2015 (one murder was on South St. on the border but in the 8th dist.)