Moore decries spread of ghost guns
LAPD: The police chief says weapons present challenge in fighting violent crime, which is up 7% from a year ago
The increasing prevalence of so-called “ghost guns” is among the Los Angeles Police Department's most pressing challenges in confronting a rise in crime, Chief Michel Moore told the Police Commission on Tuesday.
Also, in a wide-ranging presentation to commissioners, Moore reported an overall 7% increase in violent crime compared with this time last year and a 13% spike over the past two years.
Overall, he told commissioners, the homicide rate so far this year is flat compared to last year, with 199 homicides in 2022 as of Saturday, compared to 198 at the same time last year. That includes 35 homicides during the last four weeks, a drop from 47 during the same period last year.
Still, Moore said, he takes “no solace” in the year-to-year homicide numbers remaining even — because shooting violence in 2021 was at a 15-year high.
Seventy-two percent of shootings involving officers this year included subjects who also had a firearm, the highest percentage since 2011, he said.
But ghost guns — privately assembled weapons that are untraceable and unregistered — are among his department's biggest concerns, Moore stressed.
Of the over 3,500 firearms that have been booked into the LAPD this year, more than 20 percent, or 754, were ghost guns, he said. He added that, as recently as a few years ago, ghost guns would have made up fewer than 150 of those weapons.
In addition, he said, of the 13 shootings so far this year involving officers in which a firearm was present, eight involved ghost guns. That rate is up from four out of 10 in such incidents last year, he said. Moore did not specify how the officers were involved in the shootings.