Notes from LA

When I received Walter Moore’s email yesterday reporting that City Clerk workers counted only 18,559 Jamiel’s Law petition signatures, I felt a little of that feeling I imagine journalists feel when they realize they’ve been spun. Not quite bamboozle; more like mild betrayal.

I’m guessing Walter felt some of the same, because his message was short and to the point—the “estimate” of 76,000 signatures was wrong, “let’s get up, dust ourselves off,” etc. That Walter wasn’t prepared to join the conspiracy watchers apparently irked Althea Shaw enough to earn Walter a thinly-veiled swipe on Mayor Sam: “I also don’t understand why a major supporter of Jamiel’s Law would send out an email blast of defeat before speaking to us.”

It probably takes a certain belief in the impossible to get something like Jamiel’s Law done in a disconnected city of four million, but quite possibly, its biggest obstacle has been in its supporters’ refusal to deal in reality.

Walter Moore emails me:

I just got off the phone with Althea Shaw, who told me that, shortly before 5:00 p.m. today, she and her family filed over 76,000 signatures to put Jamiel’s Law on the petition!

KNBC reports:

A last-minute push Friday from supporters of “Jamiel’s Law” resulted in more than 76,000 signed petitions that could get the initiative on the city ballot next spring. The family of Jamiel Shaw, a 17-year-old high school football player who was killed in March, gave the signed petitions to the City Clerk’s Office just before the 5 p.m. deadline.

Other media continue to report that the signature drive fell short. In order to qualify for the March ballot, 73,963 of the 76,000 signatories must be registered voters in the city of Los Angeles, which leaves little room for error—3% to be exact. Needless to say, today was an incredible finish, but the nail-biting will continue well into next week.

Mayoral candidate Walter Moore has raised $150,000, the threshold he needed to qualify for matching funds and a seat at the debates. Mayor Villaraigosa, who has already raised over $1 million, must now decide if it’s worth risking a debate with Moore in order to receive another million in matching funds. You can bet his advisors are cautioning against it.

Walter Moore wrote yesterday that LAPD — and by extension, Mayor Villaraigosa — are understating the city’s crime rate by using an inflated population estimate. When I saw the number — 4,220,260 — it looked suspicious so I decided to do some digging.

I pulled population estimates for 2000 through 2007 from both the US Census Bureau and the California Department of Finance, and compared them to the figures LAPD uses in its crime statistics reports. Here’s what I found:

Not once between 2000–07 were LAPD’s population estimates anywhere near the Census Bureau estimates — not even within 100,000 people. In fact, LAPD’s estimate was consistently 3% greater than the Census Bureau’s until 2005, when it more than doubled to 7%. Then, the following year, it shot up again, to 9% — nearly 400,000 more LA city residents, according to LAPD, than estimated by the Census Bureau. In other words, more than the combined populations of Burbank, Glendale, and Santa Monica.

The California Department of Finance’s numbers were closer to LAPD’s, but still failed to explain the threefold spike between 2004 and 2006. What’s more, it appears LAPD actually used the DOF estimate in 2000, before increasing it significantly for subsequent years’ reports. Perhaps strangest of all, LAPD’s estimates remain unchanged from 2003–04, and again from 2006–08.

None of the population estimates in LAPD’s COMSTAT reports are sourced.

I’m not charging crookery here, but at face value, this is all very odd. Considering that these statistics have been published by our local press, and will undoubtedly feature prominently in the mayor’s reelection campaign, voters deserve to know LAPD’s source and/or methodology.