Crime in Glendale, California
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The Glendale Police Department responds to and records criminal acts in Glendale, California. Despite historic gang activity in the city that has decreased in frequency since the 1990s, as well as several incidents of arson, a 2024 report ranked Glendale as the hundred forty eight safest city in the United States.[1]
Glendale police officers took on bootleggers and airmen in the 1920s, a decade when the department had both a "liquor detail" and an "air policeman" charged with citing pilots for flying violations committed over the city.
In 1944, the Glendale city manager took on Police Chief V.B. Browne over suspected officer corruption, and Browne was asked to resign for failing to control his staff.
Glendale lost two police officers in the line of duty during this period:
- Officer Leslie O. Clem: Killed in a motorcycle accident in 1926 while pursuing a suspect's car.
- California Highway Patrolman Loren C. Roosevelt: Killed after being shot nine times during a traffic stop, by Erwin Walker, an Army veteran and former Glendale Police Department employee.[2]
1970–1990
In 1972, Glendale police officer John Isaacson was killed in an automobile accident while on duty.
Angelo Buono, a Glendale auto upholsterer, was convicted of sexually torturing and murdering nine women whose bodies were dumped on Los Angeles-area hillsides in 1977 and 1978.
In 1985, the notorious serial killer and rapist Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez terrorized the Los Angeles area, including Glendale. He was linked to the death of Max Kneiding and his wife, Lela Ellen, who were shot to death in their Glendale home. Ramirez also was later linked to a murder just south of Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park.
Beginning in 1984 with a fire in a South Pasadena hardware store and continuing into the early 1990s, now-former Glendale Fire Captain and Arson Investigator John Leonard Orr committed a series of arson fires that claimed four lives, and caused damage in the millions of dollars. He was convicted on federal arson charges in 1992, and on state-level arson and murder charges in 1998.
In June 1990, an arson fire damaged or destroyed 64 homes in Glendale's San Rafael Hills and caused $40 million in damage. Evening rush-hour traffic was brought to a halt at the height of the fire as flames burned on both sides of the Glendale Freeway. The 100-acre (0.40 km2) fire, one of the worst in the city's history, resulted in flames leapfrogging from house to house, destroying some, leaving others untouched. After the devastating fire, the Glendale City Council passed a brush-clearing ordinance that called for more frequent inspection of private property by fire officials, and it allowed firefighters to cut back overgrown brush on private property and charge owners for the work.