The number of shootings in Long Beach hit a five-year low over the first half of this year, the city’s police chief said Monday.
Over the past five years, Long Beach averaged 187 shootings during the first half of each year, according to police data. This year, the city logged just 133, down from 188 last year.
There were also marked declines in many other crime categories through the end of June. Robberies were down 18.9% citywide compared to last year. Property crimes as a whole dropped 23.6%, with motor vehicle thefts down 33.6% along with commercial burglary (down 34.5%) and residential burglary (down 12.2%).
Murders dropped nearly 28%, from 18 to 13, according to a memo from Long Beach Police Chief Wally Hebeish. At this pace, the number of slayings will be significantly lower than they were at the end of 2024 when Long Beach tallied 38 murders, the city’s highest number since 2021.
In the memo, Hebeish said the declines come as his department has made “focused efforts” to limit “the availability and accessibility of illegal firearms and violent offenders in possession of these weapons.”
Police seized 585 firearms in the first half of 2025, up 119 from the same time last year.
The department’s High Crime Focus Team, established in 2024, “has been instrumental in reducing shootings and gun-related crime throughout the city,” Hebeish wrote.
That team meets daily to “review crime data, share intelligence and develop focused plans” aimed at reducing crime based on historical crime patterns, Hebeish wrote.
The LBPD’s North Division, which consists mostly of North Long Beach, was the only section of the city to see a rise in homicides during the first half of 2025 (from 4 to 6).
The decline in killings reflects a trend seen in major cities throughout the state. Through the first half of this year, Los Angeles is on pace for its lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years.
From January through the end of March, average homicides dropped 24.5% in major cities throughout California and violent crime decreased 14.2%, according to a May memo from the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code.
But the data showed that other cities — such as Oakland, San Francisco and LA — were experiencing much steeper declines than Long Beach.
Here, overall violent crime was down only 0.1% as of the end of June. Most categories dropped, but a 9.4% increase in aggravated assaults blunted the progress.