Redondo Beach’s reported crimes fell to their lowest numbers in three years in 2017. However, the Redondo Beach Police Department posted their lowest rate of case closures, or clearances, since 2011. Last year, RBPD officers cleared one out of five crimes, for a rate of 20.4 percent.
The low rate of cases cleared in 2017 can largely be attributed to a low rate of larcenies and car thefts solved. Of 1,042 reported larceny cases in 2017, 203 cases were cleared. Larceny is by far the most prevalent crime in Redondo Beach, more than double the number of other serious violent or property crimes in the city.
Property crimes are a challenge for a number of reasons, Kauffman said, including staffing. The department has 15 detectives. Ideally, the department would have 20, the chief said.
“The best thing we can do to affect clearance rates of larceny would be to put misdemeanor detectives on those cases…[but] I don’t think that’s a good use of resources at this time. I would rather have detectives working on crimes as they’re happening,” Kauffman said.
The police department is budgeted for 96 sworn officers and currently has 93 officers “on paper.” But, because some of those officers are in academy training or processing as lateral hires from other police departments, RBPD has just 85 officers on the road today. The situation fluctuates daily, Kauffman said, and within three weeks, RBPD could have as many as six more officers on the street.
“Everything is in the evaluation and shuffling all the time,” Kauffman said. “If we wanted to, we could move a body out of patrol… but all of that internal movement affects the ranks.”
Kauffman also cites 2014’s Proposition 47 as a possible cause for lowered case closure. Prop. 47 reduced the classification of many non-serious, non-violent property or drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Currently, any theft of property valued at less than $950 is a misdemeanor or an infraction. Under previous law, a petty theft of certain property, or committed by offenders with prior theft offenses, could have been charged with a felony.
“Anytime things are decriminalized, or the law has been changed, you’re probably not going to have as many arrests or an interest by the District Attorney’s office to file those crimes,” Kauffman said.
“That doesn’t mean we’re going to stop enforcing but at a certain point, the interest of a line-level officer or detective [will depend on] if the DA or City Attorney’s office is going to be able to file those in LA County,” Kauffman said.
Crime rates in Redondo Beach jumped in 2015, following the passage of Prop. 47, when 1,945 crimes were reported in the city. More than 90 percent of those were property crimes.
Kauffman took pride in a few things: Crime fell in Redondo Beach; violent crimes were solved at their highest rate since at least 2011; and the number of actual larcenies reported in 2017 was the lowest in more than a decade, according to statistics from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program.
That, Kauffman said, can be credited to the agency’s crime prevention initiatives, and its relationship to the community. 2017 also saw a growth in calls for service, not just from residents, but in officer-initiated reports.
“If our calls for service are high, calls initiated are high and crime is dropping, we’re doing something right,” Kauffman said. “The best we can do is more of the same.”
