{"id":337801,"date":"2026-05-29T17:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/337801\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T17:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:18:13","slug":"crime-rates-are-down-but-public-safety-is-still-on-angelenos-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/337801\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime rates are down, but public safety is still on Angelenos\u2019 minds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To the editor: The Los Angeles Times reported on April 23<\/a> that on April 20, Bang Cho, an 84-year-old dementia patient wandering in downtown L.A., was punched and kicked in the head, slammed to the ground and set on fire. Cho did not survive. His murder occurred a block from my condominium in front of the dry cleaner I use.<\/p>\n

Police arrested Lavonta Wilder for this attack. Wilder is a 240-pound homeless man with \u201cmultiple felony convictions for violent crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times\u2019 touted decrease in L.A.\u2019s homicide rate changes nothing for Cho or, for that matter, for Wilder (\u201cL.A. is safer than it\u2019s been in decades, but crime is an issue dominating the mayor\u2019s race,\u201d<\/a> May 24). It means nothing to me. For many of us in downtown L.A., the city \u201chas turned into a dystopian hellscape.\u201d Public safety is very definitely, very much on voters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n

James Moore, Los Angeles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the editor: The Los Angeles Times reported on April 23 that on April 20, Bang Cho, an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[26355,20675,1794,121325,20912,15977,5788,139377,2072,15722,48,52,51,121324,47,50,49,63,6337,139376,1492],"class_list":["post-337801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-angelenos","tag-april","tag-attack","tag-bang-cho","tag-condominium","tag-crime-rate","tag-downtown-l-a","tag-dry-cleaner","tag-editor","tag-front","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lavonta-wilder","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-mind","tag-multiple-felony-conviction","tag-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}