Los Angeles police recorded 1,877 construction-site crimes between 2020 and 2024, and just 4.3 percent of them were cleared by arrest. The dataset — LAPD’s own open-data file, filtered to premises coded “Construction Site” — closed on December 30, 2024, so this is a fixed five-year record, not a rolling count. California’s own state data adds two more verified points: the California Highway Patrol’s 2024 report on stolen vehicles, and the state’s copper-theft felony statute, which sets the dollar line at $950, not $400.
By Jacob Ross, Security Specialist · Guardian Integrated Security · CA PPO #121089 · Last updated August 28, 2026
Every figure below comes from a primary source — LAPD’s open-data portal, the California Penal Code, the California Highway Patrol, and named news reporting for two items the state itself has not published a dataset for. Nothing is estimated, and no figure appears without the source that carries it.
Los Angeles Construction Site Crime, 2020–2024
- LAPD recorded 1,877 construction-site crimes in Los Angeles from January 1, 2020 through December 30, 2024, when the dataset closed.
- By year: 445 (2020) · 388 (2021) · 425 (2022) · 414 (2023) · 205 (2024, partial — the 2024 count reflects a known reporting lag in LAPD’s records system and should not be read as a full-year total).
- Only 81 of the 1,877 incidents — 4.3 percent — were cleared by arrest. Another 70 (3.7 percent) were cleared through other adult dispositions. The remaining 1,726, or 91.9 percent, were still under investigation with no arrest at the dataset’s close.
- By crime type: grand theft (over $950) accounts for 558 incidents, burglary 545, petty theft 170, felony vandalism 124, simple battery 64, aggravated assault 61, vehicle theft 48, trespassing 47, and burglary from a vehicle 47.
Where Construction Site Crime Concentrates in Los Angeles
- West LA division recorded the most construction-site crime of any LAPD division, 2020–2024, with 224 incidents.
- Central followed with 164, Pacific with 145, Olympic with 143, and North Hollywood with 138.
- Devonshire (119), Southwest (92), Northeast (89), Hollywood (81), and Wilshire (76) round out the top ten of LAPD’s 21 geographic divisions.
Division totals track where construction activity and reporting volume sit inside each boundary — they describe where the incidents were recorded, not a risk ranking of any individual site.
When Construction Site Crime Happens
- LAPD’s 2023 monthly data — the most recent complete year in the set — shows construction-site crime rising through the second half of the year: 40 incidents in November and 43 in December, the two highest months.
- May (39) and August (38) were the next-highest months; February was the lowest, at 21.
California’s Copper Theft Law: $950, Not $400
California Penal Code § 487j sets the felony threshold for copper theft directly: “Every person who steals, takes, or carries away copper materials of another, including, but not limited to, copper wire, copper cable, copper tubing, and copper piping, which are of a value exceeding nine hundred fifty dollars ($950) is guilty of grand theft.” A conviction carries a fine of up to $2,500, up to one year in county jail, or both. There is no separate $400 threshold in California copper-theft law — a stripped run of wire on an active job site clears the felony line at $950, the same threshold that applies to grand theft generally under Penal Code § 487.
Copper theft on California job sites has grown sharply by at least one carrier’s own count: AT&T reported more than 2,200 copper-theft incidents on its California infrastructure in 2024, up from 71 in 2021. In Los Angeles, the department stood up a dedicated Heavy Metal Task Force in early 2024 to target organized copper-wire theft, chiefly from streetlights and public infrastructure; the unit made more than 300 arrests over its operating life before it was disbanded in July 2025 amid city and department budget reductions.
California Vehicle Theft: What the CHP’s 2024 Report Shows
The California Highway Patrol’s 2024 California Vehicle Theft Facts report puts statewide vehicle theft at 176,230 vehicles, with an estimated total value of $1.56 billion. Commercial trucks and trailers — the category that includes job-site vehicles and hauled equipment — made up 6.04 percent of that total. Within Southern California specifically (the CHP’s grouping of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange counties), Los Angeles County accounted for 61.83 percent of the region’s vehicle thefts, according to the same CHP report.
What Active Video Monitoring Does — and What the Research Actually Shows
A peer-reviewed meta-analysis by Piza, Welsh, Farrington and Thomas, published in Criminology & Public Policy in 2019, reviewed 40 years of CCTV research and found camera coverage associated with an average 13 percent reduction in crime in monitored areas compared to unmonitored control areas — with larger effects reported where systems included active monitoring rather than passive recording alone. That is the correct, sourced figure; a construction-industry claim of a “62 percent” reduction attributed to this same body of research does not appear in the published study and has been removed from this page.
For a construction site, the practical read of that research is straightforward: a camera that only records has a real but modest effect. A camera watched by a live agent — one who can see an intrusion happening, issue a warning, and get a description to responding officers — is the version the research associates with the larger effect.
What This Means for a California Construction Site
Two facts from LAPD’s own data frame the risk: 91.9 percent of construction-site crime in Los Angeles closes without an arrest, and the incidents concentrate in specific divisions and specific months rather than spreading evenly. Guardian Integrated Security’s live video monitoring service puts trained agents on a site’s existing cameras in real time — the agents can visually confirm an intrusion, issue a two-way audio warning, dispatch Guardian’s own patrol response, and alert and coordinate with local police using a described, verified account rather than an unverified alarm. For sites that need dedicated coverage layered with monitoring, see Guardian’s construction site security services. For the national data behind these California figures, see Guardian’s construction site theft statistics page.
Guardian Integrated Security has protected 2,700+ California businesses for 20+ years. BBB A+ rated. California PPO #121089. To have a California construction site assessed against the risk window this data describes, request a quote or call 800-400-3167.
Frequently Asked Questions
What California law defines copper theft as a felony, and at what dollar amount?
California Penal Code § 487j makes theft of copper wire, cable, tubing, or piping a felony (grand theft) when the value exceeds $950. A conviction carries a fine of up to $2,500, up to one year in county jail, or both. There is no separate $400 copper-theft threshold in California law.
How many construction-site crimes did LAPD record in Los Angeles between 2020 and 2024?
LAPD’s open-data portal recorded 1,877 construction-site crimes from 2020 through the dataset’s close on December 30, 2024. Grand theft (558) and burglary (545) together account for just under 59 percent of that total.
What percentage of Los Angeles construction-site crimes result in an arrest?
4.3 percent — 81 of the 1,877 incidents recorded in LAPD’s dataset were cleared by arrest. Another 3.7 percent were cleared through other adult dispositions; 91.9 percent remained under investigation with no arrest at the dataset’s close.
Which LAPD division has the most construction-site crime?
West LA division, with 224 incidents recorded between 2020 and 2024 — more than any of LAPD’s other 20 geographic divisions. Central (164) and Pacific (145) ranked second and third.
Cite This Page
APA — Ross, J. (2026). California construction site theft statistics: LAPD, CHP, and California Penal Code data. Guardian Integrated Security. https://www.guardianintegratedsecurity.com/construction-theft-statistics-california/
MLA — Ross, Jacob. “California Construction Site Theft Statistics.” Guardian Integrated Security, 2026, https://www.guardianintegratedsecurity.com/construction-theft-statistics-california/.
Sources
- Los Angeles Police Department, LAPD Crime Data 2020–2024, City of Los Angeles Open Data, dataset
2nrs-mtv8(dataset closed, most recent record 2024-12-30). Queried August 28, 2026. data.lacity.org (dataset landing page). - California Penal Code § 487j (copper theft felony threshold). leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Accessed August 28, 2026.
- California Highway Patrol, 2024 California Vehicle Theft Facts. chp.ca.gov, p. 1. Accessed August 28, 2026.
- Piza, E. L., Welsh, B. C., Farrington, D. P., & Thomas, A. L. (2019). “CCTV surveillance for crime prevention: A 40-year systematic review with meta-analysis.” Criminology & Public Policy, 18(1), 135–159. Full-text (open-access pre-print), p. 8: “Overall, the OR for the CCTV studies was 1.141 (p < 0.001), which indicates a modest but significant crime prevention effect. Crime decreased by approximately 13% in CCTV areas compared to control areas.” academicworks.cuny.edu.
- AT&T Connects, “Teaming Up to Tackle Copper Theft,” July 16, 2025. attconnects.com.
- LAist, “LAPD Quietly Disbands Copper Wire Theft Task Force as Streetlight Outages Continue.” laist.com.
Methodology
The Los Angeles figures on this page come from the Los Angeles Police Department’s “Crime Data from 2020 to 2024” dataset on the City of Los Angeles Open Data portal (dataset 2nrs-mtv8), filtered to reports whose premise description is “Construction Site” and whose occurrence date falls between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2024, and retrieved on August 28, 2026. That dataset has been retired: its most recent record across all premise types is dated December 30, 2024, so the counts are final figures for the window shown, not a live count; the 2024 annual count reflects a known reporting lag and is labeled partial. Three independent totals reconcile to 1,877 — the sum of the five annual counts, the sum of the case-status counts and the sum of the crime-type counts. The California Penal Code § 487j text was read from the Legislature’s own code-display page; the California Highway Patrol figures were extracted from the agency’s own 2024 California Vehicle Theft Facts PDF (page 1); the AT&T and LAPD Heavy Metal Task Force items are sourced to named reporting (AT&T’s own company blog; LAist) because neither has a public dataset behind it, and both are disclosed as secondary, named sources rather than presented as primary data.
Dataset landing page: LAPD Crime Data from 2020 to 2024 — City of Los Angeles Open Data. Statute and report landing pages: California Penal Code § 487j · CHP 2024 California Vehicle Theft Facts.
Open datasets are updated and corrected over time; every figure on this page is point-in-time as of August 28, 2026 (the LAPD dataset is closed and should not drift, but is re-checked at each monthly re-audit).
What this page does not do: it does not claim a national ranking for California (a “first” or “most” claim) without a retrievable primary source, and none was found this session for such a ranking. It does not compare Los Angeles construction-site crime to any other city’s count. It carries no per-capita or per-1,000-resident rate. And it does not attribute a number to a source that does not contain it — three figures on the previous version of this page failed that test on re-verification and have been removed rather than carried forward.
Replication details
Headline count (Socrata SoQL against the dataset’s API resource): https://data.lacity.org/resource/2nrs-mtv8.json?$select=count(1)&premis_desc=CONSTRUCTION SITE&$where=date_occ between '2020-01-01T00:00:00' and '2024-12-31T23:59:59' → 1,877. Annual counts: add &$group=date_extract_y(date_occ) with $select=date_extract_y(date_occ),count(1). Case status: $select=status_desc,count(1)&$group=status_desc → “Adult Arrest” 81, “Adult Other” 70, “Invest Cont” 1,726. Crime type: $select=crm_cd_desc,count(1)&$group=crm_cd_desc&$order=count(1) DESC. Division: $select=area_name,count(1)&$group=area_name&$order=count(1) DESC. 2023 months: add date_occ between '2023-01-01T00:00:00' and '2023-12-31T23:59:59' and $group=date_extract_m(date_occ). Dataset closure check: $select=max(date_occ) with no premise filter → 2024-12-30. All queried August 28, 2026. CHP figures: 2024 California Vehicle Theft Facts PDF, page 1 (176,230 vehicles; $1.56 billion; commercial trucks and trailers 6.04 percent; Los Angeles County 61.83 percent of the Southern California grouping).
