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SAFER CITY INITIATIVES

Safer City Initiatives (SCI) are multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional strategies designed to reduce crime and improve quality of life in high crime and blighted areas. These initiatives, launched in targeted areas throughout the City, have proven invaluable tools in removing from our neighborhoods the enablers of gang and narcotics-related crimes.

We work in partnership with the Mayor's Office, LAPD, other law enforcement agencies, community members, local businesses, service providers and City departments to coordinate law enforcement strategies, physical enhancement projects and community outreach. Together, these agenices craft creative solutions to address unique problems which have often plagued these communities for years, if not decades. Successful SCI projects include: Baldwin Village, Hollywood, McArthur Park, North Hills and Skid Row.

SPECIAL PROFILE: Skid Row SCI

In Skid Row, we are currently working with our partners to develop guidelines for reducing crime and disorder; strengthen relationships between criminal justice agencies and the community they serve, and establish a permanent inter-organizational capacity for addressing future crime problems in the area. Skid Row is unique in that it has one of the largest concentrations of homeless residents in the Nation.

Because of the unique needs of this population, the separation of cases involving chronically homeless individuals from cases involving criminal predators and other criminal enterprises has become one of the primary goals for the Skid Row SCI. To this end, we will continue expanding pre- and post-filing diversion alternatives for the chronically homeless while aggressively prosecuting other criminal activity, such as gang and narcotics sales activity, illegal dumping, property-related nuisance activities, fraud schemes and hospital homeless patient dumping cases.

The following are the results of the first six months of the Skid Row Safer City Initiative:

35% reduction in crime (biggest drop by a factor of 3 in the City)
50% reduction in gang crime
50% reduction in robberies
Homicide reduction from 7 in 2006 to 1 in 2007 (from September 2006 to May 2007)
65% reduction individuals sleeping on the streets overnight (from September 2006 to May 2007).

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