Mayor Garcia's Disturbing Budget Boast About LB Murder Total Is No Longer Even Numerically Accurate

LBReport.com

News / Perspective

LBREPORT.com is reader and advertiser supported. Support independent news in LB similar to the way people support NPR and PBS stations. We're not non-profit so it's not tax deductible but $49.95 (less than an annual dollar a week) helps keep us online.

(Sept. 15, 2015, 6:30 a.m.) -- At an Aug. 18 budget hearing, Mayor Garcia told the Council and the public that there'd been no increase in Long Beach murders from last year at this time to now, said it was a number about the same as last year, perhaps give or take one or two, and noted that last year was a historic low.

Mayor Garcia told the Council: "From a murder point of view, we're still kind of facing a historic low number"; Police Chief Luna noted that most of the big cities across the country had experienced significant increases; Garcia noted that the increase in murder rates had jumped dramatically in many cases in a lot of urban areas; Chief Luna said he thinks the average was about 19% across the country, especially on the east coast.

We found the Mayor's murder budget boast ill advised and very disturbing...and now it's not even numerically accurate. LB had 17 murders through July 2015 as it did through July 2014, but by the end of August 2015, Long Beach had two more murders than it did in August 2014. And in the first two weeks of September 2015, LB has had two murders when it only had one in all of Sept. 2014. That's 21 as of mid-September 2015 compared to 18 as of the end of September 2014

So do the math: 21 Long Beach murders by mid-September 2015 compared to 18 by the end of September 2014 is an increase of 3, meaning an increase of 16.6%. So LB is actually in the running with other big cities after all.

[Scroll down for further below.] .

As LBREPORT.com has repeatedly noted, Long Beach is a "tale of two cities." Some parts of town never experience conditions endured by good and decent families and hard working businesses in other parts of the city.

In presenting his figures, the Mayor stresed that [paraphrase] even one murder is one too many. LBREPORT.com has repeatedly cautioned that in viewing crime statistics, it's important to remember that every number represents a real person with a real family. The Mayor's murder body count included Keshawn Brooks, the Cabrillo High student stabbed to death in March as he walked home from school at midafternoon in what police and prosecutors allege was a gang related attempted robbery.

Mayor Garcia offered the Council his figures in the context of Council consideration of his recommended budget which doesn't restore any part of LBPD's former field anti-gang unit and leaves LB taxpayers with a budgeted police level for citywide deployment roughly equivalent per capita to cutting over 30% of L.A.P.D.'s officers.

So...exactly why is the City of Long Beach unable to provide its taxayers with levels of police service that L.A. County's largest city (Los Angeles) and one of its smallest (Signal Hill) do? And if Long Beach is now so much healthier financially than it was, why can't it provide its taxpayers with levels of firefighter services that the City previously did?

Later today (Sept. 15), the Council is scheduled to vote on the management proposed/Mayor recommended FY16 budget. At that time, Councilmembers may or may not ask those questions, and may, or may not, make changes to the FY16 budget management has proposed and the Mayor has recommended.

LBREPORT.com plans to carry the proceeding live on our front page (www.LBREPORT.com), starting at 5:00 p.m.

Our text includes an edit to be more precise; LBPD data shows 17 murders through July 2015 and 17 through July 2014

Opinions expressed by LBREPORT.com, our contributors and/or our readers are not necessarily those of our advertisers. We welcome our readers' comments/opinions 24/7 via Disqus, Facebook and moderate length letters and longer-form op-ed pieces submitted to us at mail@LBReport.com.