Studio City is safe—very safe.
That’s the message that North Hollywood Division wanted to give Wednesday afternoon, flanked by Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge and LAPD Senior Lead Officers Mike Lewis and Robert Benavides, head of the Detective Division as well as other police investigators.
(See excerpts of the press conference above.)
Eisenberg said it wasn’t from a public outcry that he held the press conference, “This was our idea, because we just haven’t seen anything like this.”
He called the recent spate of crimes—a on Monday at one end of Studio City, and a at the other end of Studio City—“extremely unusual.”
He said the crimes “were not related in any way, and neither the suspects nor the victims lived in the area.”
Both LaBonge and Eisenberg credited the heavy involvement of the community in Neighborhood Watch groups with helping in the investigation, and the homeless who live in the area actually reported a fight going on in the park, and another discovered the body of the woman.
Both were domestic arguments that went severely wrong. At South Weddington Park, the argument started near Baseball Diamond #1 and the victim was stabbed in the torso.
Detective Hamilton said their investigation did not show that the park was picked specifically because of its isolated location, and the park is supposed to be closed at dark.
LaBonge said that the LAPD does a good job in getting the transients “to get where they belong” but points out that the parks are not fenced.
LaBonge said, “The community is shocked by this” but assured “we are not being plagued by a crime wave.”
In fact, in Studio City specifically, violent crime is down 21 percent, property crime is down 5 percent and overall crime is down 7 percent.
Eisenberg said, “There is nothing to fear.”
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