WILLIAM BRATTON, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), likes to say that \u201ccops count\u201d\u009d. They certainly seem to count when Mr Bratton is in charge of them. New York’s crime rate withered when he ran its police force in the mid-1990s, and Los Angeles has become more law-abiding ever since he arrived in 2002. Burglaries are down by a fifth, murders by a third and serious assaults by more than half. The setting for innumerable hard-boiled detective novels and violent television dramas is now safer than Salt Lake City in Utah.<\/p>\n
Yet Los Angeles’s good fortune is not replicated everywhere. Compared to ten years ago, when crime was in remission across America, the current diagnosis is complex and worrying. Figures released this week by the FBI show that, while property crimes continue to fall, the number of violent crimes has begun to drift upwards. In some places it has soared. Oakland, in northern California, had 145 murders last year\u201d\u201dmore than half again as many as in 2005. No fewer than 406 people died in Philadelphia, putting the murder rate back where it had been in the bad old days of the early 1990s.<\/p>\n
The most consistent and striking trend of the past few years is a benign one. America’s three biggest cities are becoming safer. Robberies in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York have tumbled in the past few years, defying the national trend (see chart). Indeed, the big cities are now holding down increases in overall crime rates. Between 2000 and 2006, for example, the number of murders in America went up by 7%. Were it not for Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, all of which notched many fewer, the increase would have been 11%.<\/p>\n
This is especially surprising given the big cities’ recent woes.<\/p>\n