Campus holds crime prevention workshop

Crime rates are down in Long Beach, said Anthony Batts, deputy chief of the Long Beach Police Department at a violence prevention forum held Friday on campus.

"We really don't know why crime is dropping, to be perfectly honest," Batts told health, law enforcement and public safety officials gathered in an East Library conference room. "But it's happening universally across the country."

In 1999, 42 homicides occurred in Long Beach, Batts said, compared to "1992 to 93 which was our heaviest year of gang violence and when we lost around 130 lives."

Batts detailed several new methods the police department is using in an effort to discourage and prevent violent crime, including short-term intervention and long-term through Community Oriented Policing. Otherwise, he continued, "we'll take two guys off the streets, and three guys will replace them.  It seems like a never-ending battle."

Batts also said the police department has set up several youth outreach programs, targeting young men between the ages of 14-21, the core crime group in Long Beach.

"We teach them boxing, take them out fishing or to a museum," Batts said. "We want to get them some exposure."  Early intervention is imperative to youth because with more than 1,300 documented gangs in Los Angeles County, the police department has a difficult time controlling all gang-related activity, Batts said.

City Prosecutor Tom Reeves also spoke at the event, and agreed with Batts on the reasons for the crime decline.

"Some say it's the great economy," Reeves said. "In some respects, who cares?"