Los Angeles County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report

What the latest available police data (2023–2024) shows for businesses in Los Angeles County — a sourced breakdown of violent crime, property crime, and city-level trends, compiled from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the California Department of Justice, and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Los Angeles County is home to roughly 9.76 million residents (U.S. Census Bureau, July 1, 2024 estimate) across 88 cities and unincorporated communities, policed by more than 40 separate law enforcement agencies. No single report covers all of them under one roof — the LAPD, LASD, Long Beach PD, Pasadena PD, and dozens of other city departments each publish their own numbers. This page compiles what those agencies have actually published for 2023–2024, cites each figure to its source and year, and flags where the data has gaps rather than filling them with estimates.

Violent Crime in Los Angeles County

The most complete single dataset covering LA County comes from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), which patrols the county’s unincorporated areas and roughly 40 contract cities — not the City of Los Angeles itself, which is policed separately by the LAPD. LASD’s own department-wide Part I crime comparison, generated January 19, 2025, reported the following for the areas it patrols:

Source: LASD, “Department-Wide Part I Crimes, January 1–December 31, 2023 vs. 2024,” report generated 01/19/2025.

For statewide context, the California Department of Justice’s “Crime in California 2024” report (published July 2025) recorded a statewide violent crime rate of 480.3 per 100,000 residents in 2024, down 6% from 511.0 in 2023 — the third consecutive annual decline. LA County-specific rates (as opposed to raw LASD counts) aren’t broken out in that statewide report; DOJ’s county-level dashboard is not available as a static, citable dataset at the time of writing, so we’ve omitted a county-wide rate rather than estimate one. See Methodology below.

Property Crime & Commercial Burglary

Property crime — the category that matters most for retail, construction, and commercial-property clients — followed a similar pattern in LASD-patrolled areas:

Source: LASD, same report as above.

Statewide, DOJ recorded a property crime rate of 2,082.7 per 100,000 in 2024, down 8.4% from 2,272.7 in 2023 — the lowest statewide property crime rate on record in the current reporting series. Burglary held roughly flat in LASD’s jurisdiction even as larceny and auto theft declined, which is consistent with what commercial-property operators and insurers describe anecdotally: opportunistic property crime is down overall, but burglary of businesses hasn’t dropped at the same rate as street-level theft.

City-by-City Comparison Within the County

LASD publishes separate Part I crime comparisons for each of its patrol stations, broken out by the individual contract cities each station serves. A sample of stations covering some of the county’s larger contract cities:

Source: LASD, individual patrol-station Part I crime comparisons, January 1–December 31, 2023 vs. 2024, reports generated 01/19/2025.

The spread is wide even within one sheriff’s jurisdiction — Compton fell nearly 6% while Lakewood rose more than 16% — which is the point of publishing city-level data instead of a single county average: a county-wide trend line can mask sharply different local conditions. The City of Los Angeles itself (LAPD jurisdiction) publishes its own year-end crime statistics separately; we did not include a City of LA figure here because the dataset we pulled from LAPD’s public data portal showed a 2024 count roughly 45% below 2023, a gap consistent with reporting-lag in the underlying incident data rather than an actual crime decline of that size, and we’re not willing to publish a number we can’t stand behind. Check LAPD’s official CompStat releases directly for citable City of LA figures.

What the Data Means for Local Businesses

• Burglary isn’t falling as fast as street crime. Across LASD’s jurisdiction, burglary dropped less than 2% while larceny-theft and auto theft both declined more, and Arson ticked up. For warehouses, construction sites, and retail storefronts, that gap matters more than the county’s overall crime trend.
• Local variation is large. A business in Lakewood-area cities saw a different 2024 than a business in Compton or Paramount. County-wide or statewide statistics are a poor proxy for the risk profile of any one property — city- and even patrol-area-level data is what should inform a site-specific security plan.
• Robbery rose slightly even as overall violent crime fell. LASD’s jurisdiction saw robbery tick up 1.11% in 2024 while homicide, rape, and aggravated assault all declined — worth noting for any business handling cash or valuable inventory.

Methodology — How These Figures Were Compiled

All figures on this page were pulled directly from the originating agency during research for this article (2026). We used:

• LASD department-wide and patrol-station Part I crime comparisons (2023 vs. 2024), published by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, generated 01/19/2025. These cover LASD’s own jurisdiction — the county’s unincorporated areas and its ~40 contract cities — not the City of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pasadena, Glendale, or the dozens of other cities with independent police departments.
• California DOJ’s “Crime in California 2024” report (published July 2025) for statewide violent- and property-crime rate context.
• U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts (July 1, 2024 vintage estimate) for county population.

We deliberately did not include a single “LA County crime rate” figure, because no live, citable, county-wide rate table was available from CA DOJ’s public dashboard at the time of writing (it’s presented as an interactive tool rather than a static dataset we could cite to a specific number), and because a rate built from LASD’s jurisdiction alone would understate the county’s true population base by roughly 7 million residents. Where a number couldn’t be verified against a live primary source, it was left out rather than estimated.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is crime in Los Angeles County going up or down? In the areas patrolled by the LA County Sheriff’s Department, total Part I (major) crime fell 1.87% from 2023 to 2024 — violent crime down 3.07%, property crime down 1.56%. Statewide, California’s violent crime rate fell 6% and property crime fell 8.4% over the same period, per the CA DOJ.

Which LA County cities have the highest crime rates? This page reports raw crime counts and year-over-year change by city, not per-capita rates, because per-capita ranking requires population-weighted data we couldn’t verify live for every city. Compare the city table above for direction of travel; for an official per-capita ranking, use CA DOJ’s OpenJustice dashboard directly.

Does this cover the City of Los Angeles? No. The LA County Sheriff’s Department does not patrol the City of Los Angeles — that’s the LAPD’s jurisdiction. We could not verify a citable, non-artifact 2024 figure from LAPD’s public data at the time of writing, so it’s excluded. See Methodology.

How often is this page updated? This page reflects the most recently published data from each source agency as of the compilation date noted above. LASD typically publishes its annual Part I comparison in January for the prior calendar year.

Sources

• Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — Crime and Arrest Information — Department-Wide and Patrol Station Part I Crime Comparisons, 2023 vs. 2024 (generated 01/19/2025)
• California Department of Justice — “Crime in California 2024” (published July 2025), data-openjustice.doj.ca.gov
• U.S. Census Bureau — QuickFacts, Los Angeles County, California (July 1, 2024 estimate)