LAPD reports, January 2020 to December 2023 · 174,827 assaults · Martin Ngoh
Black women's reported assault rate in LA is 3 to 6 times Hispanic and White women's, and nothing we measured explains why.
Black women are a far larger share of assault victims than women of any other group. Is that a higher rate of victimization, or just where assaults happen?
A higher rate. Per 100,000 residents a year, Black women's reported assault rate is 3,544: 2.9 times Hispanic women's, 5.7 times White women's, 18.4 times Asian women's, and higher than the rate for men in any group, Black men included.
Adjusted for age, year, where the assault happened, neighborhood poverty, income, unemployment, housing and homelessness, the gap is still about 2 times Hispanic or White women and 11 times Asian women. The model is below.
Black women's victimization rate is 3,544 per 100,000 a year. Hispanic women: 1,240. White women: 622. Asian women: 193. Population share does not explain it.
Black women's reported assault rate is 122% of Black men's. For Hispanic, White and Asian women the figure is 105%, 92% and 87%.
65.5% of Black simple-assault victims are women, the highest of any group (52.1% to 59.5% elsewhere). In aggravated assault the share is 44.0%, against 34.5% to 36.7% for other groups.
77th Street (4,839) and Southeast (3,744) have the most Black female victims. Central has the highest rate (11,895) on a small resident population.
67% of all assaults involved hands, fists or feet rather than a weapon. Handguns appear in 7,482.
Why. These are reported assaults against residential population. The caveats below matter as much as the numbers.
Each marker is a division. Click one for counts and rates by race and sex.
Six cuts of the same data, women only (23,622 Black women, 59,987 other women). Each asks whether a plain explanation accounts for the gap.
LAPD data holds only what was reported. The National Crime Victimization Survey measures unreported crime nationally, not for Los Angeles. If Black women report assaults more or less often than other women, every rate above moves, and this data cannot say which way.
After age, location and year, a gap of roughly two and a half to three stands, widest in aggravated and armed assaults. The model below puts numbers on it. The data shows the gap; it does not explain it.
One question, answered one adjustment at a time: how much of the gap survives? Poisson rate models at the census-tract level, women only, 33,120 tract by group by age by year cells, 82.0% of located Black women victims and 98.3% of other women (the rest were assaulted in tracts with no resident women of their group and age, so they have no denominator). Each bar is Black women's rate as a multiple of other women's after the controls named.
Where assaults happen is the biggest single factor, removing about 29% of the excess. Tract poverty, income, unemployment, renters and density together remove another 3% once location is in. Age removes 3%; year, nothing. A 2.48-fold gap remains that none of these measured factors explain.
Residents are the denominator, so exposure away from home is unmeasured, and 18% of Black women victims were assaulted in tracts with no resident women like them. Homelessness enters only as a tract-level count from the 2024 LAHSA count, a proxy for exposure, not a measure of who the victims were. Reporting behavior is invisible to police data.
LAPD moved to the FBI's NIBRS standard in March 2024, so June 2024 to August 2026 is a separate test on new records. Partner and non-partner assault are counted the same way in both systems, women only, per 100,000 residents a year. LAPD's old system codes intimate partner assault separately (626 and 236), which also lets it be split out.
Different years, a different records system and different offense coding, and Black women's rate is still about 3 times Hispanic women's and 6 times White women's.
Intimate partner assault is 47.5% of assaults on Black women and 49.7% for Hispanic women. The gap is the same size with partners as without.
Context: this is the direction national evidence points. The National Crime Victimization Survey, which counts crimes whether or not they were reported, found the rate of violence against Black women almost 50% higher than against White women in 2005, by strangers, acquaintances and partners alike (Heimer and colleagues, BJS; Harrell, BJS 2007). Los Angeles's police-recorded gap is larger than that national survey figure, which is itself worth explaining.
Police reports, not how often women are hurt. In the national victimization survey, which counts assaults whether or not police learned of them, Black and White women describe being assaulted at about the same rate nationally and about 1.5 to 2 times in large cities. A follow-up tested why police records differ more: not reporting rates, not (or only a little) how police write up a call, not the same women counted repeatedly, but largely where assaults happen and who calls. Hospital emergency departments, which do not depend on a call to police, see a gap like the police one (about 4.6 times for women in 2021 to 2022), which points to the survey undercounting assaults on Black women.
The data says Black women's reported assault rate is higher. It does not say why. Nothing here measures causes, offenders or circumstances.
Every number is a report that reached LAPD. Willingness to report, and police recording practice, differ by group, by area and over time. A higher rate can partly reflect more reporting.
Rates count assault reports. A woman assaulted twice counts twice, which is common in partner violence, so a rate of 3,544 per 100,000 is not the share of Black women assaulted.
Officers record victim race by sight; the population counts people who are Black alone. LA has 24% more people who are Black alone or in combination with another race. If multiracial victims are recorded as Black, the rate is overstated by up to that much: at worst 2.3 times Hispanic women and 4.6 times White women instead of 2.9 and 5.7.
Rates divide by where people live, not where they spend time. Someone who works, commutes or socializes in a high-assault area carries that exposure home to a different denominator.
Divisions with many visitors, workers or unhoused residents, Central above all, show inflated rates because victims there often do not live there.
4,714 women victims have no usable race (unknown, or LAPD's "Other" code), and they cluster where few Black residents live, which slightly understates other groups' rates. Spread across groups the way known victims are in each division, the ratios become 2.83 for Hispanic and 5.46 for White women, against 2.86 and 5.7.
Neighborhood, income and housing are shaped by segregation and discrimination. When the gap shrinks after these controls, it has been located, not explained away.
Simple and aggravated assault, including intimate partner assault (LAPD codes 624, 626, 230 and 236). Other assault codes (on police, child abuse, sexual battery) are left out. 13,084 victims with unknown race or sex are left out of the rates. LAPD descent codes are officer-recorded and were collapsed to four groups; everyone else is excluded.
Victims cover January 2020 to December 2023, a window that includes the pandemic. Population is the ACS 2020 to 2024 five-year average, with sampling error at the tract level.
LAPD victim descent codes mapped to four groups (Asian combines the Asian descent codes). Population by census tract from the ACS 2020 to 2024 five-year release via Census Reporter; 1,110 tracts inside the city were assigned to LAPD divisions by tract centroid using the city's division boundaries (11 fell outside). Rates divide victims by residents and by 4.0 years. Cells with fewer than 2,000 residents are not rated.
Sources: LAPD Open Data (Crime Data from 2020 to 2024; NIBRS Victims), US Census Bureau ACS, LA GeoHub, LAHSA. NIBRS assaults are offense codes 13A and 13B, classed as intimate partner by their offense label; officer and child victims are excluded in both systems. NIBRS labels do not map one-to-one to the old codes, so compare ratios between groups rather than levels between systems. Reproduce with the scripts in the repository.