Los Angeles Daily News

Homicides up 47 percent so far this year; cops pour on resources

By Jason Kandel
Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - Homicides in the San Fernando Valley have increased 47 percent so far this year, and understaffed police units are struggling to keep up with the caseload, officials said Wednesday.

Police recorded 25 slayings in the Valley between Jan. 1 and April 10, compared with 17 during the same period last year, according to the latest Los Angeles Police Department Compstat crime tracking figures released Wednesday.

"Detectives are working super hard," said Capt. Ronald Marbrey, who oversees Foothill Division detectives. "They're working overtime weekends, nights. They're doing everything possible to ensure we're getting these murder suspects off the street. Everybody's pitching in as we all have limited resources."

Van Nuys saw the biggest spike, jumping from three last year to 12 so far this year, a 300 percent increase. North Hollywood Division police recorded five homicides this year, compared to three in the same period last year, a 67 percent increase.

"There isn't this violent spike in crime or murders that everybody has to lock themselves in," said Capt. Bill Sweet, who heads the North Hollywood Division. "Our numbers are so small that anytime we have one or two above an increase, the percentages look a lot worse.

"The frustrating thing is that some of them would have been hard to prevent. We want to bring them down."

Van Nuys got off to a rough start in January, when a gunman shot a parolee and two women in a Van Nuys apartment in what appeared to be a drug deal gone bad. The case was picked up by the Robbery-Homicide Division downtown and remains unsolved.

Capt. James A. Miller, who heads the Van Nuys Division, said that triple homicide and five more deaths in January were viewed as anomalies.

"None of them were related except for the triple," he said. "It's been just a mixture of things. Two were robberies that went awry. One was a gang dispute. One was a love triangle. They're all over the place.

"It's disconcerting to me to have such a large number of homicides."

Police have been trying to reign the violence in with nightly deployments of elite Metropolitan Division officers and a special Valley Traffic Division detail to patrol some of the hardest hit areas.