COVID and Crime in Los Angeles in Commercial Areas

We are beginning to understand quite a bit about the impact of COVID on crime in 2020, though there remain important questions. As part of a larger work on both the spatial and temporal dynamics of COVID, I'm looking here at time and trend within commercial areas. Specifically, I'm comparing areas zoned "Commercial" or "Industrial," using STL Decomposition, and my particular interest here is in the difference in trends compared to previous years within the red bars (the highest restriction level - over 65).¹

The trend difference here is pretty stark, as are the absolute numbers (observed) though it's interesting to note that the increase in the trend of robbery started prior to the harshest lockdown policies and continues beyond them. This is in keeping with the fact that some policies had already been put in place (both in the commercial and public sectors), so the effects of people staying at home may have already been at play as early as January or February, and we can see they continue (with some variation) throughout 2020 in the image below.

Overall, this is in keeping with findings from others regarding the effects of COVID, though we are among the first to be looking at it relative to commercial versus residential areas. In many ways, we see what we would expect to see, given the shift of people from work to home, though as our full analysis will show, not everything is as expected.

Future researchers will have quite a bit to parse in terms of location and how, if we face another pandemic, we can better direct resources to reduce the impact on commercial areas.

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1 See the Oxford University site on COVID restrictions for details.^↩