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Community Policing
The City of Paramount and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department believe in a whole community approach to law enforcement. This strategy involved building trust through collaboration, community outreach and employing problem-solving techniques rather than just traditional law enforcement methods, to enhance safety and improve quality of life in our neighborhoods.
Getting to Know Your Local Area Deputy
To ensure more personalized service, the City is divided into four beat (areas) and each area is assigned a dedicated quality-of-life deputy who manages concerns in that part of town. This allows officers to become familiar with neighborhood issues and develop relationships with the residents and business owners that they serve. To connect with your assigned deputy, please refer to the map below.
Deputy Deployment Levels in Paramount
Community members often ask about the daily deployment levels of Sheriff’s deputies in Paramount. The answer can be very complicated. The following will distill that answer to the basics.
Historically Low Crime Rates
First, though, there are two things to remember: these levels are set by law enforcement professionals and they are adjusted ongoing by the latest crime trends. Also, these levels have been responsible for historically low crime rates in Paramount.
Crime dropped by 1% during 2020. Over the last 20 years, the decline has been 39%. The number of crimes committed in 2020 were the lowest since 1973, when the population was nearly half.
The City covers 4.8 square miles, of which 2.5 square miles are residential. The population is approximately 56,000, which increases to 75,000 during the day with those who work in town.
Numerous Levels of Personnel
On average, there are six deputies assigned to answer calls for service in Paramount – and they are supplemented by Special Assignment Officers and Community Service Officers.
Deputies take reports for crimes that have been committed or respond to crimes that are being committed. You may also see deputies on motorcycles who are assigned to enforce traffic violations.
An average of five Special Assignment Officers and one SAO sergeant focus on quality of life issues and address crime trends in their assigned BEATS.
Community Service Officers respond to parking calls and take reports for non-violent crimes that do not have suspect information.
Having these additional personnel allows deputies to focus on deterring crime and producing quicker response times.
Further continuing resources assigned to the Paramount Station include a lieutenant, detective bureau sergeant, and five detectives.
When extreme emergencies occur in Paramount, mutual aid is available via the Lakewood Station, which can include patrol cars from the cities of Bellflower, Artesia, Lakewood, and Hawaiian Gardens.
The Numbers
On average, Paramount has the following number of deputies, SAOs, and CSOs covering its 4.8 square miles:
19 working the early morning/day shifts
14 during the evening/night shift
9 assigned to work day/night shifts
Thanks to these deployment levels, Paramount had the lowest emergency response time among the five Lakewood Station cities in 2019 at 3.2 minutes and the second lowest so far in 2020 at 3 minutes.