The LA Police Commission is scheduled to vote tomorrow on whether to re-nominate Charlie Beck for a second term as Chief of the LAPD. One measure will be the rate at which crime has been going down. On Saturday, the LA Times reported that there has been mis-reporting. During 12 months, ending last September, almost 1,200 incidents of stabbings, beatings and robberies were classified as minor crimes rather than the felony crime of aggravated assault.
Joel Rubin worked on the investigation, a study of thousands of police records, interviews with two-dozen current and retired LAPD officers and analysis by several experts. Commissioner Robert Saltzman has been critical—most recently, “surprised and troubled”—by the way Beck handed the Department’s purchase of his daughter’s horse.