Commander LeBaron's words come just weeks after the City Council approved a FY15 budget (recommended by Mayor Robert Garcia) that didn't increase budgeted police officers for taxpayers (after Councils from 2009-2013 let officer levels fall by roughly 200 officers) but does include an increase of $350,000 -- successfully sought by 3rd district Councilwoman Suzie Price -- to help LBPD deal with residential burglaries.

Commander LeBaron prefaced his remarks by noting that in discussing crime trends, he wasn't speaking about one neighborhood specifically and noted that surrounding communities, including Lakewood and other jurisdictions, are "all experiencing some of the same issues."

Regarding LBPD's sprawling East Division [which encompasses basically half the city from Cherry Ave. to the east city limits] Commander LeBaron said:

"We are having some crime problems and I will ackowledge that and primarily out in the East Division, we're seeing property crime. That drives our crime rate. It's very, very high as far as the numbers of total crimes go. The violent crime, not so much thank goodness and my officers do a great job of making that their priority...but the property crime: it's still a priority but there's a lot of it. We're trying to deal with it."

[East Division Commander LeBaron] I don't want to stand up here and paint a bleak picture, and I also don't want to get into crime statistics because they don't necessarily speak to you and your neighborhood and your street. I can tell you in general terms, that compared to last year to this year, crime is actually down overall...

What we're seeing in regards to property crimes: it's the residential burglaries during the daytime. More than half my residential burglaries happen when the sun's up. So the interesting thing about that is that people [perps] just assume, or they count on the fact, that no one's going to be home 'cause they want to go into a house where they're not encountering anybody.

So they go in; they knock on the door, sometimes if nobody answers, they go around to the side, sometimes they just guess and hope nobody's home, and they do everything they can to try and figure out how to get into that house...

...[T]he current trend...is that they're going into the backyards. They're finding ways in there. What's really frustrating is a lot of times all they're doing is grabbing the latch or the little pull rope on the gate and it opens up and they walk into the backyard. So they can be walking down the sidewalk and in a matter of about four seconds they make that left turn up your driveway, grab your gate, open it up, it's onlocked and they go in back gate, shut, they've got all day. Now it's just fair game, they're going to look at every window, they're going to check, they're going to slide, and ultimately if they have to they'll even break a window if they need to and be able to unlock it from there, so we see that the backyards really seems to be a popular method of entry right now for some of these burglars.

Commander LeBaron recommended: "Continue to assess your own property...Ask yourself: is this safe? If I'm a burglar, how am I going to get in here? And if you don't have a lock of some sort on your gate or something that really requires some sort of manipulating to open that gate, then I ask that you to probably look at that and do something to try and control that, because that's one of the primary methods of entry that we're seeing."

Earlier that day (Sept. 17), LBREPORT.com has learned that a similar scenario allegedly took place in ELB's Lakewood Village neighborhood. The area's Community Watch tells LBREPORT.com that a home in the 4300 block of Pepperwood was burglarized between 11:15 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Two individuals allegedly gained entry by breaking a side sliding glass door window when no one was home.

Lakewood Village's Community Watch holding its regularly scheduled meeting tonight (Sept. 18) at Twain Elementary School Auditorium, 6:45 p.m. Scheduled guest speakers include LBPD East Division Commander LeBaron and 5th dist. Councilwoman Stacy Mungo.

In the recent FY15 budget cycle, Councilwoman Mungo was among a unanimous Council that voted to allocate $350,000 beyond Mayor Garcia's recommended budget to deal with residential burglaries. The action came after 3rd dist. Councilwoman Price pressed for the $350k allocation on the Council floor but encountered initial resistance from Vice Mayor Lowenthal (who sought to delay funding for several months until after the FY14 budget had completely closed to see if LBPD ended FY14 under-budget [with some surplus].)

The Council's Budget Oversight Committee (Lowenthal, O'Donnell, Mungo) voted on Sept. 2 to recommend Council approval of the Garcia budget without additional sums for residential burglaries [or for additional park rangers, a separate budget item.] Councilman Patrick O'Donnell, who wasn't present in the Council Chamber on Sept. 2 when the full Council took up the Budget Oversight Committee's recommendations for the FY15 budget, entered the Council Chamber almost immediately thereafter and supported Councilwoman Price's floor motion to allocate (without delays) $350k toward residential burglaries, which carried 9-0.

Regarding auto burglaries, Commander LeBar said they often occur at night when the perpetrators walk up and down the street, check the door handles, and if they're unlocked, take whatever they can grab. "They're going to throw it in their backpack and they're going to keep on going."

He said the perpetrators are also willing to break car windows if they see valuable items left in the car (such as electronics or computers), and urged people not to leave anything in cars. "Don't leave anything in it. Just clear it out and make sure that it's empty inside, because that's one way to discourage a car thief or a burglar."