West Hollywood’s November Public Safety Reports Show Crime Down, Trouble Spots Remain

If you look through West Hollywood’s November public safety reports, the first thing that jumps out is that the numbers bend in two directions at once. Serious crime is lower than it was a year ago, which is obviously good, with calls for help dipping a bit, but the same stubborn trouble spots on the Westside and the nightlife blocks still drive a lot of the work. You can catch the entire meeting via WeHoTV below or here.

Those figures were presented to the Public Safety Commission last night, at the Dec. 8 meeting in Council Chambers. Commissioners spent part of the evening walking through the Sheriff’s, Fire and Security Ambassador reports, then finished off the usual year-end chores, approving minutes and locking in next year’s meeting dates.

Crime and calls for service

Before getting into the charts, Lt. Ashley Turner introduced the station’s new point person at the table, Sergeant Omar Luevano, who is stepping into the role previously held by Sergeant Jason Duron. She told commissioners he brings more than three decades of experience and knows the local ground well, saying he is “super engaged with the community” and that if you name a business, “he knows the owner.”

Sheriff’s deputies were sent to a little over fifteen hundred calls for service in November, 1,520 in the report. Last November 1,748 calls were logged. On top of that, deputies noted 1,409 things they ran into on patrol this November, compared with 1,322 “observed” incidents a year earlier.

Arrest numbers didn’t change much. November ended with 43 people booked on felony charges and 70 on misdemeanors, 113 arrests total. The same month in 2024 (YoY) closed with 117 arrests, split 44 felonies and 73 misdemeanors. Turner also noted West Hollywood Station volunteers donated 195 hours in November, helping cover everything from front-counter work to special events.

Response times moved the way people hope they will, down instead of up

Emergency calls in November now average just over three minutes, 3.1 versus 3.4 a year earlier. Priority calls, the next level down from life-threatening, have moved from almost twelve minutes to about eight and a half. Routine calls, the low-urgency runs that get stacked behind more serious incidents, came in around 28 minutes on average instead of just under 32. 

Year to date, deputies have handled 18,662 calls for service through the end of November. That’s a slight dip from 18,952 YoY in 2024. Arrests are moving in the opposite direction, 1,365 so far this year compared with 1,207 last year. The station reported patrol staffing at 111 percent of the deployment goal, meaning it is running above its baseline plan.

Part 1 crime: overall drop, some problem trends

Serious crime, the state’s Part 1 categories, totaled 158 cases in November. Add that to the earlier months of 2025 and West Hollywood is sitting at 1,754 Part 1 crimes through November. Last year at this point the count was 1,941, so the overall number is down just under 10 percent. 

Some categories are moving faster than others:

Homicide: none in November, one homicide so far this year.

Rape: four in November, 26 year to date, up from 22 in the same window last year.

Aggravated assault: a dozen cases in November and 103 so far this year, down from 152 in 2024.

Robbery: four in November, 84 for the year, almost exactly where it was last year at 83.

Burglary: 19 cases in November, 284 through November, up a little from 271 in 2024. Residential burglaries have dropped, while “other” burglaries, including secure-garage break-ins, have climbed.

Auto theft: 15 cars reported stolen in November, 113 for the year, slightly under the 118 auto thefts logged in 2024.

Arson: no arsons in November, but 14 so far this year, compared with six last year.

Most of the serious crime still sits on the Westside. Roughly two out of every three November Part 1 cases were reported in the West District, which takes in the Rainbow District and the Sunset Strip. The City Center accounted for just under a fifth of the total. The Eastside made up the rest.

Turner underlined that split for the Commission, saying the Westside “still drives most of the serious crime we are seeing,” with the Rainbow District and Sunset Strip keeping deputies and the entertainment policing team busy outside bars and clubs on weekend nights. She also pointed to the station’s mental health response, noting that the MET team handled 60 calls in November and that deputies submitted 75 online SORTS reports, many of them tied to Halloween.

Commissioner Tod Hallman used the question period to press for information on a robbery that hit close to home for him, the recent armed robbery at Trendsetters Barbershop at the corner of Fountain and La Brea. According to the report filed with the West Hollywood station, two suspects entered the business, confronted the victim, and took items at gunpoint. The suspects then “fled the scene in an unknown direction.” WEHOonline spoke with one of the barbers at the shop and they confirmed no one was injured.  “I’m concerned with all crimes that happen within the city, to residents and businesses,” Hallman said. “This one just hits close to home for me, because it is my barbershop. It’s two blocks from my home.” 

He asked Turner if there were any updates the station could share.

Turner said she could not go into detail because it is an active investigation, but she did describe how the case is being handled.

“We are working with the Los Angeles Police Department on that particular vehicle and similar incidents,” she said. Suspects in these cases often use rental cars and false identification, she explained, which slows down the process. “It isn’t instantaneous that we often catch the suspect, but we will catch the suspect,” she told the Commission. “Right now, it is still an active investigation, but with many leads.”

Rainbow District pickpockets keep climbing

Pickpocketing in the Rainbow District has turned into its own red flag on the charts. It keeps going in the wrong direction. Even with the awareness campaigns out there, it feels stuck.

In November, that area alone logged 52 pickpocket thefts. Perhaps worse, none of those cases led to an arrest that month. Since January, the district has seen 293 pickpocket incidents and just two arrests. Turner told commissioners 34 of the November thefts happened during the City’s Halloween Carnaval, showing how quickly the numbers can jump in a single night.

The pattern remains the same: crowded bars, crowded sidewalks between clubs. People digging phones and wallets in and out of pockets and bags all night. At some point in the evening they reach back for a wallet or pat a back pocket and it’s already gone. Commissioners have pressed for more enforcement and for nightlife venues to give customers a clearer heads-up when those numbers spike.

Crashes and problem streets

Traffic in November looked a lot like traffic in every other month, just with more numbers attached.

Deputies took 88 collision reports for the month. Seven of those involved drivers hitting people on foot. None were listed as car-versus-bike crashes.

The station also noted two DUI arrests and two crashes tied to drunk driving. There was a single scooter or e-bike crash and no scooter or e-bike citations. This sticks out like a sore thumb since many residents (this one included) see infractions daily with scooters and bikes blazing down sidewalks at dangerous speeds.

As for tickets, they landed on the usual suspects. Fountain Avenue topped the list with 61 citations in November. Melrose Avenue wasn’t far behind at 57. Santa Monica Boulevard had 19, and Sunset Boulevard had 5. Those stretches mix fast cut-through traffic with crosswalks, side streets and a lot of people on foot, so they keep showing up in the monthly traffic charts.

Turner told commissioners that of the 12 aggravated assaults reported in November, deputies have already made five arrests. On the traffic side, she broke out the seven vehicle-versus-pedestrian collisions and said four of those crashes were clearly caused by the driver, with the remaining three are still under investigation. She also flagged two DUI “saturation operations” scheduled for December as part of the station’s holiday enforcement push, though no exact dates were given. Reminder: Don’t Drink and Drive! Walk, use ride shares or the trolley, etc. and remember: Buzzed Driving IS Drunk Driving.

Commissioner Kelli Pilarski thanked Turner for highlighting those numbers, calling them part of a broader traffic-violence picture. She pointed to the year-to-date totals for vehicle-versus-pedestrian crashes, bike collisions, DUI arrests and DUI-related crashes and said she was “really excited” to see the DUI operations on the calendar, hoping they will keep some of those numbers from climbing higher.

Pilarski also tied the department’s active-shooter trainings to a recent scare near Santa Monica and Formosa, when deputies shut down part of the boulevard and cleared buildings after reports of people with a rifle on a rooftop. She told colleagues she was in the neighborhood that night and felt the communication was strong on the ground. Readers can find WEHOonline’s earlier coverage of that rooftop rifle call here.

The City’s Security Ambassadors spent November doing the street-level work

Allied Universal representative Jackie Hernandez, who presented the monthly numbers, reminded the Commission that much of that work starts with training. “We just continue having our ambassadors train,” she said. “For the most part, everything, just the new staff coming in, we have training before we put them out on the field.”

Director of Community Safety, Danny Rivas, said the City is tracking that training as one of the KPI’s  (key performance indicators) for the program. “I think we’re at 99% compliance in terms of all of the staff that are on board with Allied, in terms of them going through all of the necessary training, Narcan, LGBTQ sensitivity training, etc,” he told the Commission, noting that the last few percentage points usually reflect turnover and new hires who are still in their first week.

Hernandez said that is also why the Narcan number has not hit a clean 100 percent. “The only reason why we’re not at 100% with the Narcan is just because we’ve had some people out of town.” New hires, she explained, do not get Narcan on day one. “We train them first and then, as soon as the training is done, which would be within the same day that they start, the following day they get Narcan to carry around while on patrol.”

For the month, the report lists:

4,637 hospitality contacts with residents, workers and visitors.

4,267 business contacts.

1,432 contacts with unhoused people.

703 calls for service.

409 responses to scooters left blocking sidewalks or curb ramps.

10 requests for help from the Sheriff’s Station and 5 involving Fire or EMS.

Compared with last November, hospitality help was a little higher then than now. Business contacts sit in roughly the same range. Contacts with unhoused residents have nudged up this year, and calls for service are a bit higher, about a 2 percent bump. Scooter complaints, mostly parking and access issues, have crept up too.

The escort program barely shows up on the chart (most likely because most residents don’t even know about it) with Ambassadors walking 25 people to cars, rideshares or bus stops in November. In the same month last year they did 90. The City promotes escorts as a free option, but commissioners have wondered more than once how many people know they can call for someone to walk with them instead of going alone. I can tell you I’m not aware of such a service.

By district, the picture shifts a little. On the Westside, hospitality and business contacts both run higher than last year and Ambassadors are dealing with more scooter problems, while calls for service sit close to where they were. This lends cred to a lot of disability advocates who say scooters are a continuing problem. In the City Center, hospitality help dipped, business contacts ticked up and calls for service slid slightly. Eastside numbers show fewer hospitality and business contacts but more calls for service and more scooter-parking complaints.

Kiosks, hours and how decisions get made

Commissioner Catherine Eng used the discussion to zero in on one of the most visible pieces of the program, the Ambassador kiosks. She asked Hernandez how many kiosks the City actually has and which ones run around the clock. Hernandez told her there are eight kiosks in operation, including locations at La Brea, Fairfax, Veterans Memorial, La Jolla, a temporary kiosk at Larabee and Santa Monica, Robertson, West Hollywood Park and Plummer Park. “Our 24 hour ones would be West Hollywood Park for the restrooms and Veterans Park,” Hernandez said. “All the other kiosks are from 11 to 7 p.m.”

Rivas followed up with a clarification from the City side. He noted that the City’s website still shows nine kiosks, “but one of them is not in operation right now,” he said, referring to Kings Road Park. That kiosk is expected to rotate between Kings Road Park and Hart Park rather than be posted in both places at the same time.

Eng also pressed on why kiosks in the Rainbow District and other busy areas do not simply run later into the night. “Why 11 to 7?” she asked. “Why is that standard? Like, why in the Rainbow District wouldn’t it be noon to ten at night?”

Rivas said the hours are tied both to contact volume and to safety. “It’s based on the volume of contact, but also for safety purposes,” he said. Later evening hours would mean doubling up staff. “If you’re having [kiosks] later in the evening, now that one security ambassador turns to two,” he said. “From an operations perspective, it just does not make sense for us to do that,” adding that in those hours the City leans more on Sheriff’s deputies and roving patrols than fixed posts, given the crowds and alcohol on the sidewalks.

Eng pointed out that the City could always add staff instead of treating the current headcount as fixed. “We could increase the number of people in the day, just saying,” she said.

Commissioner Hallman picked up on the kiosk theme as well, focusing on the unit at Santa Monica and La Brea that is stored at the UPS store. He noted that Sunday is still the one day there is no kiosk on that corner. “That’s been a topic or a question for over a year,” he said, reminding Staff that the store manager had previously said they were willing to give program partners a key so the kiosk could be rolled out.

Rivas said his understanding was that the Sunday coverage had been extended under the previous provider and promised to have Staff revisit it with UPS and Allied. “We’ll definitely take a look at that,” he said, and see what it would take “to kind of work something out.”

Commission business and what comes next

Before Staff dug into the data, the Commission signed off on the Dec. 8 agenda and approved minutes from the Oct. 27 meeting. Those earlier minutes captured public comments on zoning and development rules and on lighting, parking and safety in and around Fountain Avenue.

Staff then walked commissioners through a draft 2026 meeting schedule. Public Safety Commission meetings are set to stay on the fourth Monday of each month, with a few dates shifted around holidays. The next one is scheduled for Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, at 6 p.m. in Council Chambers at West Hollywood Park.