Los Alamos crime falls 10%, but scams and assaults still dominate reports

Los Alamos police reported a 10% drop in overall crime in Chief Dino Sgambellone’s first-quarter 2026 update, but the numbers showed a different kind of threat still pressing on households: theft, fraud and simple assault accounted for 75% of all reports, and scams continued to carry direct financial risk for residents.

The report said Crimes Against Persons and Property Crimes both moved lower, a sign that the county’s most visible safety problems remained under control. But Crimes Against Society rose from 1 to 5, a reminder that even in a relatively small community, crime patterns can shift quickly and in ways that do not resemble traditional street crime. In Los Alamos County, where the U.S. Census Bureau estimated 19,407 residents on July 1, 2025, even modest swings can matter.

The chief’s guidance focused less on patrol tactics and more on how residents respond when fraudsters come calling. LAPD urged people not to react to urgency, to verify any request involving money or gift cards, and to use a family code word as a safeguard against AI voice cloning. The department also said residents should rely on strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, and never trust callback numbers supplied by strangers. That advice reflects the county’s current fraud landscape, where scammers are far more likely to use a phone, text or email than a break-in.

Those warnings were reinforced by a steady stream of local scam alerts. On June 6, 2025, county officials warned about calls falsely claiming residents owed delinquent property taxes, and said official delinquency notices are issued only by U.S. mail. They told residents to report suspicious calls to the Los Alamos Police Department at 505-662-8222. In 2025, LAPD also warned that fraudsters may pose as law enforcement or other government officials, a tactic that can pressure victims into acting before they verify anything.

The county’s broader crime data suggests why officials are paying close attention. Through the first three quarters of 2025, police reported 152 crimes, down from 161 in the same period in 2024, a 6% decrease. That total included 47 crimes against persons, 98 crimes against property and 7 crimes against society. LAPD has said its shift from the older UCR summary system to NIBRS in April 2021 gives a more complete picture because it counts all crimes in an incident and sorts them into persons, property and society categories.

That system matters in a place like Los Alamos, where public perception of safety remains strong. In the county’s 2024 Community Survey, 58% of respondents rated their overall feeling of safety as excellent and 34% as good, and 90% gave safety from property crime a higher or similar rating than national benchmarks. Police also launched a new traffic unit on Sept. 14, 2025, but the latest report makes clear the larger challenge is not only crashes or burglaries. It is the quieter, faster-moving fraud that can drain a bank account before a neighborhood ever sees a squad car.