KTLA News: "LAPD Assistant Police Chief Gates on crime rates in Los Angeles" (1974)

Well, I I think you've noted that crime in America has increased substantially during the past year and uh crime has not increased in the city of Los Angeles to that extent. As a matter of fact, it's only up a little over 2%. Uh we can attribute that to many factors. I think most important is the energetic and effective work of our police officers and secondly the many innovative programs that Chief Davis has brought to this community that involve the community and the police together working towards the reduction of crime. That's possible. I would rather equate it to a criminal justice system that does not work as effectively as we would hope. Uh when you only put uh less than 10% of the burglars in state prison, when you return most of them to the streets uh place them on probation. When you uh put only 3% of those who commit grand theft in state prison. And when you consider that those who commit crime are between 85 to 90% recidivist, then you can see why possibly crime is increasing in not only this city but in the country as well. answer any questions you might what can you tell the people of Los Angeles about the increase in crime of only 2.4% here in Los Angeles of people that are now more than ever more frightened of the increases in crime. Well, how can you justify any optimism about when there would be some people who say even the 2.4 is too much. >> Well, I would agree with that and uh you may have noted in the past two years we have had crime reductions. We were very hopeful hopeful that this year also we would have a crime reduction but unfortunately crime uh has had a pervasive effect across the the nation and we've felt it. >> What do you blame that on? What do you >> It's hard to make that judgment. Uh crime is as a multi-causal base and uh it's very difficult to make judgments in that area. Looking at the categories >> uh economic factor fact that Chief Davis has implemented a number of programs that involve the community. Community is working with the police to solve the problem of crime. Did you say that um for two years the crime rates went down? You'd hoped that this year it would be the same, but it went up. What will you be doing next year? >> Well, we have no indication. Um we found last year the crime began to increase. It decreased uh somewhat during part of 1974 and then has begun to increase in the latter half of 1974. Uh I'm hopeful that we can stabilize crime and that we can uh reduce it for 1975. >> How would you go about that? >> Continuing with the same programs that we presently have. Uh we are moving into team policing in early in January of 1975. We think again that this will increase our uh effectiveness by bringing the public together in a team approach to reducing crime.