LOS ANGELES, CA – Burglaries in the San Fernando Valley are down 43% compared with last August, while burglaries across Los Angeles have fallen 27%, according to new figures released by Mayor Karen Bass as her administration points to a combination of targeted policing, civilian crisis response and community-based prevention programs.
Bass announced the figures Aug. 28, presenting them as evidence that the city’s broader public-safety strategy is producing results after a period of concern over home burglaries along the Ventura Boulevard corridor.
The decline follows a surge of LAPD resources earlier this year after residents reported a string of break-ins in San Fernando Valley neighborhoods.
Under the strategy described by the mayor’s office, LAPD’s Operations-Valley Bureau increased patrols by uniformed officers, detectives and specialized units, positioned police vehicles in visible locations, used mobile license plate readers in higher-risk burglary areas and deployed air support as a deterrent. Senior Lead Officers also increased community engagement, while specialized investigators from the Commercial Crimes Division and Robbery-Homicide Division worked on high-value burglary cases.
The administration says those steps were part of a larger approach rather than a stand-alone enforcement campaign.
“A safer city requires prevention, intervention, and investments in our communities,” Bass said. She argued that police should focus on violent crime and serious criminal activity while trained civilian teams handle certain nonviolent crisis situations.
That distinction is central to the administration’s public-safety policy.
Valley burglary response intensified after spike in break-ins
The San Fernando Valley became a particular focus earlier this year after a series of residential burglaries around the Ventura Boulevard corridor.
Bass directed LAPD to strategically deploy additional resources in response to those patterns. The measures included higher-visibility patrols and investigative coordination intended to identify repeat offenders and organized burglary crews.
The city’s Aug. 28 announcement says Valley burglaries are now down 43% compared with the same point last August.
That figure is a specific year-over-year comparison and should not be interpreted as meaning burglaries have fallen 43% from every other period or in every Valley neighborhood.
The mayor’s announcement did not include a neighborhood-by-neighborhood table showing where the reductions were largest.
LAPD maintains its own Crime Mapping and COMPSTAT system, where residents can view current crime information and division-level statistics for areas including Foothill, Mission, North Hollywood, Topanga, Van Nuys and West Valley.
The department’s COMPSTAT system is designed to give commanders and the public a statistical view of crime trends and help guide enforcement priorities.
That makes the mayor’s announcement one political and policy interpretation of data that LAPD also tracks through its own crime-analysis systems.
Citywide burglaries also down
Bass’ office said burglaries across Los Angeles are down 27% citywide compared with last August.
The administration has linked that decline to increased police resources as well as prevention programs, though it is difficult to assign a citywide crime trend to any single intervention.
Crime can move for many reasons, including policing strategies, offender activity, economic conditions, neighborhood behavior, reporting patterns and changes in organized criminal networks.
The mayor’s office is therefore making a policy argument when it says the decline reflects its “comprehensive approach to safety.”
The burglary reduction itself is the reported statistic; the explanation for why it occurred is the administration’s interpretation of the trend.
That distinction matters in a mayoral administration using falling crime as evidence of policy success.
LAPD has also targeted organized burglary crews
The city’s current burglary strategy is not limited to visible patrols.
In August 2025, Bass and LAPD announced the dismantling of a burglary crew investigators linked to 93 break-ins dating back to 2022 across Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said that investigation depended on detectives sharing information across bureaus and connecting cases that initially appeared unrelated.
That kind of investigation helps explain why the mayor’s latest strategy includes closer cooperation with specialized divisions rather than relying exclusively on patrol officers.
Organized crews can operate across multiple neighborhoods or jurisdictions, making individual burglary reports difficult to connect unless detectives compare vehicle descriptions, surveillance footage, suspect patterns and other evidence.
The city has increasingly framed those operations as part of a broader effort to target repeat offenders and groups responsible for large numbers of property crimes.
Homicides provide a second crime trend
Bass’ burglary announcement also highlighted a separate decline in homicides.
In 2025, Los Angeles recorded a 19% citywide drop in homicides, according to the mayor’s office, while areas designated as Gang Reduction and Youth Development zones saw an approximately 27% decline.
The city described the 2025 homicide total as the lowest Los Angeles had recorded in nearly 60 years.
Those figures are distinct from the Valley burglary numbers.
They measure a different crime category over a completed calendar year and involve different neighborhoods and intervention programs.
Bass has nevertheless grouped them together as evidence for a public-safety strategy built around both enforcement and community programs.
Office of Community Safety plays larger role
A major part of that strategy is the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety.
Bass created the office to oversee violence prevention, civilian crisis response, gang intervention, community programming and reentry services for people returning from the justice system.
The office oversees the city’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development program, commonly known as GRYD.
GRYD operates in communities identified as being heavily affected by gang violence and uses prevention workers, intervention teams, violence interruption and youth programming.
The administration says homicide declines in those areas are evidence that community-based intervention can complement traditional policing.
Again, the city’s numbers demonstrate that homicides fell; the claim that GRYD produced the entire decline is broader than what the data alone can prove.
But the program is a significant part of how the administration has chosen to spend public-safety resources.
CIRCLE expansion brings non-police crisis response to Valley
Another major component is CIRCLE – Crisis and Incident Response through Community-Led Engagement.
The program sends trained civilian teams to certain nonviolent crisis calls that otherwise might be handled by police.
Los Angeles secured more than $2 million in federal funding in July 2026 to expand CIRCLE, including additional coverage in the San Fernando Valley.
The funding is intended to help hire additional health-care professionals and support continued expansion.
CIRCLE operates 24 hours a day and is intended for situations involving people experiencing mental health or other nonviolent crises where an armed police response may not be necessary.
The city says one purpose is to give people a response focused on care while freeing LAPD officers to handle crimes and emergencies requiring law-enforcement authority.
The program began as a pilot in Hollywood and Venice in 2022 and has since expanded to Downtown Los Angeles, South Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, Westside communities and the Harbor Area.
CIRCLE does not respond to violent calls
The distinction between CIRCLE and LAPD is important.
According to the city’s official program guidance, CIRCLE is intended for situations that are nonviolent, noncriminal and not medical emergencies.
Examples can include welfare checks, disturbances involving people experiencing homelessness, someone under the influence or people needing clothing and other assistance.
When a situation involves violence or an immediate threat, police remain the appropriate emergency response.
That helps explain the administration’s argument that civilian response does not replace policing.
Instead, it attempts to reduce the number of lower-risk calls requiring sworn officers.
Whether that translates into measurable reductions in burglary is much harder to demonstrate directly.
The relationship is indirect: the city argues that reducing unnecessary police calls gives officers more time for criminal enforcement and investigations.
Federal money raises longer-term funding question
The $2 million CIRCLE expansion also highlights a broader policy issue: sustaining civilian crisis programs can depend on external funding.
The latest expansion was supported through federal dollars rather than only the city’s General Fund.
That can help a program grow quickly, but it also raises questions about how Los Angeles would maintain staffing and services if federal grants later expire or are reduced.
Bass’ administration has presented CIRCLE as a core part of its long-term public-safety model.
Continued funding will therefore matter if the city wants to keep expanding civilian response while maintaining LAPD staffing and other community-safety programs.
Summer Night Lights adds prevention component
The administration is also using youth programming as part of its violence-prevention strategy.
The 2026 Summer Night Lights program operated at 42 locations in communities affected by violent crime and provided activities, meals, sports, resource connections and evening programming for families and young people.
More than 600 young people received summer jobs through the program in 2026, with staffing increased 16% citywide.
Seven of the Summer Night Lights sites were located in the San Fernando Valley, including Delano Recreation Center, Hubert Humphrey Memorial Recreation Center, Lanark Recreation Center, Sepulveda Recreation Center, Sun Valley Recreation Center, Valley Plaza Recreation Center and David M. Gonzales Recreation Center.
The program is based on the idea that keeping parks open, supervised and active during summer evenings can reduce opportunities for violence while giving young people alternatives and access to services.
That is a different form of crime prevention from burglary patrols, but the mayor’s office places both under the same broader public-safety framework.
More than 50,000 participated at Valley parks this summer
On Aug. 18, the mayor’s office said Summer Night Lights had served more than 50,000 people across seven Valley parks during the 2026 summer.
That figure shows the scale of the program locally.
The city also said its Office of Community Safety had added GRYD intervention workers and Community Navigators in Foothill, Mission, Van Nuys and North Hollywood and launched a Safe Passage program at Canoga Park High School.
Safe Passage programs are designed to provide additional support around routes young people use to travel to and from school in communities where safety concerns have been identified.
These programs do not directly investigate burglary cases, but they illustrate the administration’s broader definition of public safety.
Business corridors are also part of strategy
Bass’ office said the Office of Community Safety has worked with the Sherman Oaks Business Improvement District to address concerns along the commercial corridor.
Business districts can experience public-safety issues that differ from residential neighborhoods, including theft, vandalism, homelessness-related calls, nighttime disturbances and concerns about customers and employees feeling safe.
The administration’s strategy is therefore attempting to address multiple kinds of community complaints at once.
That can create political advantages because residents may judge public safety not only by serious-crime statistics but also by what they encounter in shopping areas, parks and residential streets.
License plate readers remain an important enforcement tool
Mobile license plate readers were specifically included among LAPD’s Valley burglary tactics.
These systems can scan plates and compare them with information connected to stolen vehicles, wanted suspects or investigative leads.
For burglary investigations, that can be useful when detectives have vehicle descriptions from surveillance cameras or witness reports.
The mayor’s announcement did not say how many Valley burglary arrests were directly attributable to license plate reader data.
It also did not provide information on the number of devices deployed, how long they remained in particular neighborhoods or how data from the readers was retained.
Those details matter because license plate reader expansion can also generate privacy questions over how much vehicle-location information government agencies collect and how long they keep it.
The latest announcement focused on crime reduction rather than those policy tradeoffs.
Public crime data remains available through LAPD
LAPD restored broader public access to crime data after upgrading its reporting system, allowing residents to view statistical comparisons across crime categories and neighborhoods.
The department says its public data includes information on homicides, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, vehicle theft and other crimes.
That matters when evaluating political claims about crime because residents do not have to rely solely on a mayoral press release.
They can compare citywide and division-level data through LAPD’s Crime Mapping and COMPSTAT resources.
The department also uses COMPSTAT internally to analyze crime patterns and decide where to deploy personnel.
Political significance extends beyond burglary numbers
The latest crime statistics arrive as public safety remains one of the most visible measures of any Los Angeles mayoral administration.
Bass is using the burglary and homicide declines to argue that her approach — pairing law enforcement with social and community programs — is working.
That message goes beyond LAPD staffing.
It asks voters and residents to accept a broader definition of public safety that includes civilian mental-health response, youth programming, violence interruption and reentry services alongside arrests and patrols.
Supporters of that model argue it lets police focus on violent and serious crimes while specialists handle crises that may not require law enforcement.
Critics can reasonably ask how directly those programs can be credited for changes in burglary or homicide rates, particularly when citywide crime trends are influenced by many variables.
The data establishes that reported crime has fallen in the categories highlighted by the administration.
It does not, by itself, isolate which individual policy caused the reduction.
Comparison periods remain important
Another important limitation is the way the latest numbers are presented.
The Valley’s 43% burglary drop and the 27% citywide burglary drop are comparisons with last August.
They are not necessarily full-year comparisons.
Earlier in August, the mayor’s office had cited a 42% Valley burglary decline from last August, suggesting the percentage can move as additional crime reports enter the comparison period.
That does not make the latest figure unreliable.
It simply means crime statistics should be understood as moving snapshots rather than permanent numbers.
Final annual comparisons will provide a more complete picture once 2026 ends.
City plans to maintain combined strategy
For now, Bass says Los Angeles will continue using both police resources and community-based programs.
LAPD is expected to maintain targeted enforcement where burglary patterns emerge.
The Office of Community Safety plans to continue CIRCLE expansion, GRYD intervention, Summer Night Lights and neighborhood partnerships in the Valley.
The administration sees those programs as connected pieces of one public-safety system.
The central political claim is that Los Angeles does not need to choose between enforcement and prevention.
Bass is arguing that it needs both.
The newest statistics give her administration substantial numbers to point to: 43% fewer burglaries in the San Fernando Valley compared with last August, 27% fewer burglaries citywide, and a completed 2025 homicide count that the city says was its lowest in nearly six decades.
What remains harder to measure is exactly how much of that improvement belongs to additional patrols, investigative work, organized-crime arrests, civilian crisis teams, youth programs or broader changes occurring across Los Angeles.
That question will remain important as the city decides which parts of the strategy deserve continued or expanded public funding.
