Crime Types

Here you can view the visualizations for Questions 1, 2, and 3, along with our insights from them.

What are the most common types of crimes?

1) Battery is the most common violent crime

At 18,053 recorded incidents, battery/simple assault is not only the most common violent crime, but it has a higher total than every non-violent crime category besides stealing vehicles and identity theft. This speaks to how prevalent violence is in Los Angeles.

2) Stealing vehicles is the most common nonviolent crime.

At 24,714 incidents, stealing vehicles is the most common crime in Los Angeles - violent or nonviolent. This figure should push policymakers and organizations to spread awareness to Los Angeles residents about having greater caution with their vehicles.

3) More expensive crimes are more common.

This is slightly surprising. One might think that smaller crimes such as shoplifting would happen more often. However, in 2022, it appears that criminals not only seek more, but attempt with greater frequency, to steal items of greater value, especially automotive vehicles.

What percentage of total crimes committed are violent?

1) About two-thirds of all committed crimes are non-violent

This isn't surprising, as the crime report dataset contains many different types of crimes that rarely necessitate the use of weapons, such as car theft, shoplifting, and parole violations.

2) Non-violent crimes occur roughly twice as often as violent crimes.

This shows how our perception of crime is largely focused on offenses that involve violent attacks between people, as often depicted in the media.

3) Overall, there were 234,344 crime reports in the year of 2022.

This is roughly equal to one crime report for every 16 residents.

What are the most common types of weapons used in violent crimes? (focusing on homicides, sexual assaults, assaults/batteries, and robberies)

1) Strong-Arm, which refers to the use of one's own bodily force, was the most commonly recorded weapon for all crimes, besides homicides

Considering that Los Angeles and California as a whole has notoriously strict gun control regulations, this makes some sense. People in the city might have less access to guns overall.

2) Firearms made up each of the top 3 most common weapons in homicides.

Homicides may be the exception in terms of prevalence of firearms, as they may occur more often among gangs that are able to illegally traffick arms en masse. Additionally, the fatal capability of firearms is enhanced compared to "Strong Arm" attacks

3) Sexual assaults had the least diversity in terms of weapons used.

Only the top three weapon categories ("Strong Arm", "Unknown/Other Weapons", "Handgun") were involved in more than 10 sexual assaults each.