If You Were A Crime Victim, What Should You Do Now?
By Paul Lerner

If you were the victim of a crime, the following information might be helpful to you.

Your local police station is:

Los Angeles Police Department - Wilshire Area Police Station
Front Desk (213) 473-0476
4861 West Venice Boulevard - Just East of La Brea Av.
Los Angeles, California 90019


If the crime just happened, and you have not yet reported it to the police, please do so immediately. If the crime involved violence, or the threat of violence, call 911. For other crimes, call 1-877-ASK-LAPD.

When you call, give as many details as possible.

You may need to wait a while for a police car to arrive at the scene of the crime. For example, if something was stolen out of your parked car, but at the same time there was a shooting in a nearby neighborhood, then the police will be busy at the scene of the shooting.

Please don’t give up and fail to report the crime! If the crime does not get reported in the official police statistics, then our neighborhood will wind up getting fewer police patrols assigned here, and you and your neighbors will be more likely to become crime victims in the future.

You may want to call friends and ask them to wait with you until the police arrive. It can be helpful to have friends there to assist you.

If you have trouble filing a police report, or feel that your report has not been followed up on adequately, then call our LAPD Senior Lead Officer for this area, who is our "neighborhood cop." He is Officer Arthur Gallegos, and his cell phone number is (213) 793-0708. Keep in mind that Officer Gallegos only answers his cell phone when he is on duty, so if he is off duty for a few days, he will not get back to you until he returns to duty. Do go ahead and leave a voicemail message for him. We have found Officer Gallegos to be very responsive.

If you filed a police report and want to know the status of the investigation, try to contact the detective assigned to your case. If you do not know the detective’s name, call the LAPD Wilshire Detective Desk at (213) 922-8205

For more information about crime and public safety from the Los Angeles Police Department, visit the LAPD web site by clicking here

To learn more about our neighborhood’s safety and crime prevention efforts, check for information regularly on this web site. You may want to “bookmark” this site. We also recommend that you sign up to receive our e-mail safety alerts by clicking where it says "Join Now" in the upper right hand corner of the home page.

If you've been the victim of crime in our area, you can share your experience in our forum area under the topic "Neighborhood Victims of Crime" Just click here

Finally, please consider volunteering for the Melrose Action Neighborhood Watch. Our organization is made up entirely of volunteers who donate their time to make this a safer and better community. We can only do as much as our volunteers are willing to do. We currently need more Block Captains and all other types of volunteers. If you would like to volunteer, click here to contact us at info@melroseaction.com.
We hope that this information has been helpful to you. 

From your neighbors in the Melrose Action Neighborhood Watch