CNS - Gang-related crime in Los Angeles dropped 3.8 percent in 2007, according to newly released statistics, which Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Bratton credited to “a new approach.”

Gang homicides decreased 26.5 percent last year, from 294 in 2006 to 216. The number of aggravated assaults dropped 8.4 percent; attacks on police officers dropped 2.2 percent; rapes were down 9.3 percent; and carjackings decreased 2.2 percent.

Despite those drops, there were 41 more robberies, 46 more criminal threats and 28 more cases of extortion in 2007 as compared to 2006.

“Working together with community members, our city’s political leadership and state and federal agencies, we have begun to turn the trend and reduce gang crime and the fear associated with it,” Bratton said.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said to maintain the decrease in gang crime, the city government and police now “must flood our neighborhoods with the critical prevention, intervention and youth development services, and get illegal guns off our streets to keep violence down for the long term.”

There was an overall 4.9 percent decrease in crime in Los Angeles from 2006, while homicides fell to a 37-year low, 392.

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