With gun violence heating up in Highland Park, the Los Angeles Police Department is deploying additional officers to the area this coming weekend.
"Additional resources are going to pour over the entire Figueroa Corridor through the weekend," a post on the LAPD's Northeast Facebook page reads.
Ten violent crimes, most of them shootings, were reported in Highland Park between Wednesday, July 18 and Tuesday, July 24, prompting a Los Angeles Times crime alert. Since then, according to crimemapping.com and scanner reports, five more shootings have been reported in the neighborhood.
While gun violence was prevalent in Highland Park, it wasn't until recently the shootings have resulted in injury and death.
On July 7, outside of a home near the corner of Avenue 53 and Monte Vista Street.
Last Friday, .
A shooting at the corner of on Tuesday afternoon resulted in a victim suffering "serious but not life threatening" injuries.
Another victim was hospitalized following a shooting near the corner of North Figueroa and Amabel streets in Cypress Park at around 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday.
, Northeast LAPD Gang Unit Detective Rick Ortiz said the violence is being fueled by area gangs who have been more brazenly moving into rival territory.
Speaking at Thursday night's at the Greek Theater, Senior Lead Officer Nina Preciado said that patrol officers from LAPD's central bureau have been deployed to Highland Park to address the recent increase in gun violence.
"We have we have a unit that’s out of central bureau, they work all the divisions, what they do is rotate to the areas that need more assistance. They’ve been in Highland Park already," Preciado said.
The increased man-power in the area paid off on Thursday afternoon, as officers were able to quickly respond to a car to car shootout in Cypress Park and make an arrest, Preciado said.
"[There's] definitely more officers out there, the more the better. Another call came out [on Thursday] in Cypress Park. Officers were just around the corner and were able to get to that call immediately and arrest the person responsible. So without the extra officers I don’t know if that would have been possible."
In addition to the added officers from the Central Division, Preciado said officers would be adopting a "no tolerance" policy in order to take gang members off the streets.
On Wednesday morning, a parole raid conducted by members of the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office arrested more than 70 gang members for parole violations. Several of the individuals arrested were from Highland Park, according to LAPD's Northeast Division.
Many of the arrests were for possession offenses, including marijuana and guns.
Preciado said that that, with more officers working Highland Park, the LAPD would be targeting gang members for these type of offenses.
"It always helps when we have more officers--the more the better. [We] try to cite [...] people for anything, arrest them for anything," Preciado said. "[We're] try[ing] to do zero tolerance, anyone goes to jail for any little thing."
Reporter Jacqueline Mansky contributed to this article.
