Road rage is not uncommon in auto-centric Los Angeles, but the three perpetrators in a recent incident comes as a surprise: They were riding bicycles. On April 6, three cyclists in Huntington Beach somehow became engaged in an unprovoked altercation with pedestrians on Main Street downtown. According to witness testimonies, the cyclists first began recklessly swerving onto the sidewalk and into traffic from the designated bike path, then dismounted their bicycles to physically assault bystanders. At some point, a restaurant manager was said to intervene, pepper-spraying the cyclists who then focused their attack on the manager. No arrests have been made. Over the past three weeks, this is the 7th reported incident to occur in our beachside communities that involve cyclists attacking motorists and pedestrians.
On April 7, two firefighters and two police officers responded to a call of an assault at an apartment building in Leimert Park. According to the LAPD, a 41-year-old woman had been pushed and hit by her son. When the public safety workers arrived, the man turned on them, spitting on and biting the officers, and also kicking the firefighters. No arrest was made.
The Downtown neighborhood in Costa Mesa recorded 11 criminal incidents on April 8. According to the CMPD, the day’s list of crime reports included five car break-ins and one stolen vehicle. The majority of the incidents occurred on residential streets, and in parking lots or garages. In multiple reports a suspect broke a window to gain entry. No arrests have been made.
The Crawler flagged a shooting at an apartment building in Irvine, near the University of California Irvine, on April 9. When police responded to calls of shots fired, they found that eight of the ten victims were 18 or younger, one of whom was a 9-year-old boy. Further information about the boy’s condition was unavailable and no fatalities have been reported. Police classified the shooting as gang-related, despite the area not typically associated with gang-related crimes.
Los Angeles, like the rest of the country, has been experiencing a disturbing rise in hate crimes. The unfortunate situation shows no sign of slowing. On April 10, three men and one woman between the ages of 20 and 29 were walking on a sidewalk in the heavily Jewish Fairfax district when someone drove up next to them and hurled anti-Semitic slurs. Someone in the car also issued a death threat before driving away. No arrest has been made. The code for “Bias: Anti-Jewish” has been used 176 times in the last two years.
That was not the only incident. The day before, a 70-year-old woman was attacked on a bus in Eagle Rock in what the LAPD is describing as an anti-Catholic hate crime. According to police, someone hit the woman with a weapon, knocked her to the ground and pulled her hair. Since the LAPD made its data publicly available in 2010, the code for “Bias: Anti-Catholic” has only been used twice, most recently last July.
A 33-year-old man was attacked by someone wielding a hammer in Laguna Beach on April 13. According to the LBPD, the suspect may have picked the area because it is a popular place for large gatherings. No arrest has been made.
Police responded to a disturbing incident in a gated community in Newport Coast on April 14. A 48-year-old man was riding his bike when he was attacked on the street by an individual he did not know. The man was then abducted, bound with wire and viciously assaulted. He was later discovered in Crystal Cove State Park, and the suspect has since been arrested. The MO code for “wire used as binding” has been recorded by Newport Beach Police Department on 2 prior occasions in the past month.
A 24-year-old man was the victim of a violent attempted car-jacking on April 15. An individual identified as a neighbor was seen armed with a handgun and forcing his way into the victim’s vehicle on a residential street in the seaside neighborhood of Corona del Mar. The victim’s car was then witnessed to crash into a nearby garage. According to the Newport Beach Police Department, the crash is suspected to have been deliberate. Neither of the two men survived the incident.
The Crawler flagged a crime related to dog fighting during this period. On April 17, police responded to calls about a couple living together at a house in Mount Washington. The victim—a 35-year-old woman—was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, according to police. Further information about the dispute and its connection to dog fighting was unavailable. Since 2011, the code for “crime related to dog fighting” has been used 15 times.
How we did it: At Crosswebs, we examine publicly available crime data from multiple Greater Los Angeles law enforcement agencies. We utilize an algorithm we call the Crawler that scans publicly available data for common threads and unusual incidences. Law enforcement officers tag most crime reports in their system with MO codes (“modus operandi,” Latin for operating method or style), shorthand for describing what happened in a crime incident, which our algorithm cross-references to form the basis of our reports.
About Us
Crosswebs-LA seeks to deliver community-level data and analyses to the people of the Greater Los Angeles Area who want to make their neighborhoods and city safer, healthier and more connected. We are a non-profit news organization covering our neighborhoods in a different way — through data. Greater Los Angeles is too complex to see through one lens. That’s why we try to give compelling summaries about each neighborhood through the data we collect on issues that matter, such as crime, traffic and air quality. We want to turn those numbers into brief, efficient stories that people can use to understand what’s happening around them.