Port officials have seized a record $1 billion in counterfeit goods coming into L.A. this year, and officials say it could have been avoided if shoppers had been paying attention
LOS ANGELES
This city can’t afford anymore.
The recent spate of new legislation has left L.A. with one of the highest rates in the country of retail crime. With a huge population of tourists, L.A. is still far more likely to have retail crimes than New York City, which is still far more likely to have retail crimes than Chicago, which is still far more likely to have retail crimes than Detroit.
L.A. has, in fact, become the crime capital of the world. Which of America’s 25 largest cities has a more extensive record of retail crime?
According to the L.A. County Office of the Sheriff’s Department, it has been going on for a while: In 2017, there were 13,700 retail crimes reported, a 57 percent increase from 2016. That’s about 1,600 more retail crimes than Los Angeles has had in the last five years.
This year is shaping up to be worse.
In the first three months of 2018, L.A. had 9,400 retail crimes, up 42 percent from the same period in 2017. L.A. is already experiencing more than triple the level of retail crimes New York has seen in 2016.
If you look at the number of reported retail crimes per 1,000 people, L.A. is already more than double New York’s level. (L.A. County has a population of 1.84 million, while New York has a population of 8.4 million.)
The New York version of retail crime is so bad that its “rate” of retail crime per 100,000 people is already higher than that of L.A. at about 1,150.
There is no way to know what the retail crime rate in New York will be at the end of 2018.
The New York and L.A. rate is the same because they both use the same numbers. It’s the total number of retail crimes that determine the L.A. rate.
The New York-based Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles total retail crimes by county, and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department compiles