Crime In the City! LBPD Releases Its Annual Report, Which Reveals ...

The Laguna Beach Police Department has released its annual report for 2011, which cites plenty of stats regarding crime levels in the city.

You can read the report in full by clicking the PDF file in the box on the right --->

Some handy report factoids:

• Violent crime, which includes homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assaults, decreased 9% from the previous five-year average.

• But thefts were up last year, shooting up by 11% from the five-year averages. The LBPD blames the spike largely because of more stuff being pilfered from unlocked cars, which accounts for 41% of larceny incidents. Bottom line: lock your cars, people, what are you thinking?!?

• Property crimes, which recently dropped to an all-time low, have begun creeping back up again. Still, the report says such crimes in 2011 were 51% lower than in 1990.

• Misdemeanor arrests, DUI arrests and traffic stops are also on the rise, which the LBPD says is because of stricter enforcement.

• Emergency calls dropped slightly, from 2,390 in 2010 to 2,327 in 2011. No stats available as to how many of these were actual 911 calls, or mistakenly butt-dialed ones (and there are a lot of those).

• Numbers were also down for impounded and claimed dogs and cats as well as adopted animals, primarily because the had to relocate to temporary digs following the December 2010 flood and the building's subsequent remodeling work.

• Finally, the department issued a whopping 37,208 parking tickets in 2011—about 100 a day—which is actually down from an even-more-astounding 50,798 in 2008. The tickets filled the city coffers with $1.3 milllion.