Downey Police Department

If you, a loved one and / or a family member is under investigation or arrested by the Downey Police Department, it is natural to want to know what bail amount is associated with the offense, the factual and legal requirements to prove the crime took place, the defenses that are possible and the potential punishment if convicted of the crime.

We at Greg Hill & Associates believe it is good practice for one to also be aware of a few more things before interacting with any police or sheriff’s department.  It is prudent to know the size of the police department, the demographics of the city, the most frequent types of crime the department investigates / handles and just a bit about the city’s history to make one’s communication with law enforcement more meaningful, more savvy and perhaps, more respectful.  This can lead to a better outcome than if one is not so informed.

This article is presented for the reader with this goal in mind.

The Downey Police Department is staffed by 113 sworn police officers and sixty-eight non-sworn staff, making it one of the larger police departments within Los Angeles County.  This is understandable, given that its population is 114,355 residents, as of the 2020 census.

While reports of robberies, aggravated assaults, and petty thefts in Downey dropped in 2008, auto thefts reached a 10-year high.  In 2008, 1,231 vehicles were reported stolen in Downey. Other crimes recorded by the FBI Crime Index for the year 2008 include 252 robberies, 172 aggravated assaults, twenty-four rapes, 711 burglaries, and 2,038 acts of larceny/thefts. 

Greg Hill & Associates has handled perhaps 75 criminal cases over the last 24 years in the Downey Courthouse.

As of the 2010 census, the racial makeup of Downey was 56.6% White, 17.7% Non-Hispanic White, 7.0% Asian (2.2% Korean, 2.2% Filipino, 0.6% Indian, 0.5% Chinese, 0.3% Vietnamese, 0.3% Japanese, 0.2% Thai, 0.1% Cambodian, 0.1% Pakistani), 3.9% African American and 7.6% from other races.  Hispanics or Latino of any race was 70.7% of the Downey population (54.0% of Downey residents are of Mexican ancestry, 3.9% Salvadoran, 2.0% Cuban, 2.0% Guatemalan, 1.1% Peruvian, and 1.0% Nicaraguan ancestry).

As of the 2020 census, the median income for a household in the city was $46,000 and the median income for a family was $50,017.  Eleven percent of the households in Downey are below the poverty line.

The city of Downey is home to the oldest operating McDonald’s restaurant in the world, which opened in 1953 at the southwest corner of Florence Avenue and Lakewood Boulevard.  Damaged in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the store reopened in 1996 along with a museum and gift shop.

Downey is also home to the Los Padrinos Juvenile Detention facility.

Vultee Aircraft was Downey's largest employer during World War II, producing 15% of all of America's military aircraft by 1941.  The company was a pioneer in the use of women in manufacturing positions and was the first aircraft company to build airplanes on a powered assembly line.  Vultee became a part of North American Aviation (later named North American Rockwell), then Rockwell International, which was then bought by Boeing.  The company’s facilities were the birthplace of the systems for the Apollo Space Program as well as the Space Shuttle.  For over 70 years, Downey's Rockwell NASA plant produced and tested many of the 20th century's greatest aviation, missile, and space endeavors.

By the early 1970s, the facilities encompassed some 1,700,000 square feet (160,000 m2) of enclosed area over more than two hundred acres (81 ha).  However, by the post-Cold War 1990’s, Downey was severely hit by cutbacks in the defense budget.  Rockwell International, which once had more than 30,000 employees had fewer than 5,000 in 1992.  The seventy-year history of airplane and space vehicle manufacturing in Downey came to an end when the Rockwell plant closed in 1999.

The former North American Rockwell plant was demolished, and the site now features the Columbia Memorial Space Center, Downey Landing shopping center, the Promenade at Downey shopping center (the former movie studio of Downey Studios) a Kaiser Permanente hospital, and a city recreation fields park.

For more information about being arrested and possibly facing a criminal case, please click on the following articles:

Below is the Google Map to the Downey Police Department.