LMPD Was Tony Gwynn of the County in 2012 for Solving Violent Crimes

When it came to solving violent crimes, the La Mesa Police Department batted .580 last year—the highest rate of any police agency in the county except the Sheriff’s Department.

After the Sheriff’s Department’s clearance rate of 59 percent, La Mesa’s 58 percent topped San Diego’s 54 percent and seven other cities in 2012 with their own police departments, said a study released Wednesday.

A clearance means at least one person has been arrested and charged with an offense.

But the study by the San Diego Association of Governments found that La Mesa’s crime rate for serious offenses— homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft—rose 11 percent in 2012 from the year before.

Over the five-year period between 2008 and last year, however, the rate fell for so-called FBI Index Crimes fell 18 percent, the report said.

La Mesa’s property crime rate rose 12 percent between 2011 and 2012, but fell 19 percent over the latest five-year period, SANDAG said. Property crimes are burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft.

The city’s clearance rate for property crimes wasn’t as good, however.

The La Mesa Police Department solved 15 percent of property crimes in 2012, compared with 22 percent in 2011.

National City and Coronado had the best clearance rates in this category in 2012, at 29 percent and 25 percent, respectively. The Sheriff’s Department solved 17 percent of property crimes, the study said.

How much did La Mesa residents and businesses lose in 2012?

According to the study, the dollar value of losses in 2012 was $2.38 million in 2012—a 19 percent drop from the $2.96 million of 2011 and a steep 37 percent decline from the $3.7 million of 2008.

But La Mesa police reported recovering $700,261 in property in 2012, compared with $827,470 in 2011 and $1.8 million in 2008.

The actual number of serious crimes reported in La Mesa was 1,956 in 2012—an 11 percent rise over the 1,760 in 2011 but a 14 percent decline from the 2,281 in 2008, the study said.

La Mesa, with a listed population of 58,296, had 224 violent crimes in 2012, compared with 227 in 2011 and 239 in 2008. That includes two homicides reported here in 2012. 

But the Jewel of the Hills recorded 367 incidents of domestic violence in 2012—a 19 percent increase from the 308 in 2011 but a 7 percent decline from the 394 of 2008.

SANDAG reported that in 2012, the violent and property crime rates in the San Diego region both increased for the first time since 2001 and 2003, respectively.

“However, it is important to note that across the seven crime categories, most of the reported numbers were still among the lowest in the past 30 years,” said the report written by Cynthia Burke, director of SANDAG’s Criminal Justice Research Division.

“The number of homicides increased the most, compared to 2011, with preliminary motive information suggesting this was due at least in part to gang-related crime.”

SANDAG also highlighted these figures:

• The region had 107 homicides in 2012, a 30 percent increase from 2011 and the largest one-year jump of the four violent crimes.
• The number of robberies reported across the region rose 5 percent, with increases in all of the location types, except bank robberies, which fell 22 percent from 2011 to 2012.
• While the number of robberies with a firearm rose only 1 percent over the past year, the number of aggravated assaults with a firearm increased by 27 percent.
• A greater number of residential burglaries, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts were reported in 2012, compared to 2011. The only exception was nonresidential burglaries, which fell 5 percent.
• Over the past 10 years, the percent of property recovered fell from 46 percent to 21 percent, possibly reflecting advancements in technology and the ease of disposing of stolen property, priorities of law enforcement to focus on violent crime with limited available resources, as well as changes in how this information is compiled and reported.
• At midyear 2012, national violent and property crime rates were also up, compared to 2011, but to a lesser degree than in the San Diego region.

“Increases were greater in the Western region of the United States, but large California cities did not have increases consistently larger than other Western cities,” SANDAG said.