Calls to police from two blocks of Zuni Road more than tripled in August. Most were disturbance calls.

The Ledger keeps a copy of the city’s feed of police calls and watches for blocks that break their own pattern. These two broke theirs in the first week of August.

Calls more than tripled in five weeks

The 5500 and 5700 blocks of Zuni Road SE are a commercial stretch in the South San Pedro neighborhood, between Madeira and Alvarado.

From March 11, the oldest call in the feed, to August 1, the two blocks drew 93 calls from the public, about 4.5 a week. From August 2 to September 6, the newest day in the feed, they drew 76, about 15 a week.

Disturbance calls made up most of the rise, about 7 of the 10 extra calls a week. Suspicious person and theft calls also rose as a weekly rate.

The rest of the street held flat

Citywide, calls from the public held at about 3,220 a week. On every other block of Zuni Road SE they fell 1 percent. Elsewhere in the surrounding square mile they rose 13 percent.

Officers did not start more calls here either. A December 2024 APD release counted “self-initiated calls by officers” apart from other calls. The Ledger reads the feed’s ONSITE codes as those calls, and treats every other code as a call from the public. On these blocks the ONSITE calls fell from 0.9 a week to 0.6.

Calls coded aggravated assault or armed robbery of a business came about once every two weeks before August. There has been one in the five weeks since.

What we do not know

A call is what someone reported, not what officers found. The feed places calls on the street, not at an address, so it cannot say which business any came from. A few rows sit seconds or minutes apart and may be one event logged twice.

The blocks are in APD’s Southeast Area Command. The Ledger has not yet asked the command or the businesses on the stretch. Any answer, or none, will be added here with the date.

The calls map shows the two blocks.