As L.A. Violent Crime Drops, the Desert Becomes a Hot Spot

On a recent Friday night, San Bernardino County’s interagency high desert gang unit was working yet another homicide, chasing yet another gang member who had moved from San Bernardino into one of the sprawling new developments beyond the Cajon Pass.

Police said 17-year-old “L’il George” announced his presence in the new neighborhood by shooting into a crowd outside an Adelanto house, killing 17-year-old Adrian Washington at his own birthday party.

Six days into the search, the gang detail was struggling.

“In L.A., the gang officers tend to work one area or one gang,” said California Highway Patrol officer Royal Johnson, a member of the anti-gang task force. “We can’t even keep up right now with who’s moving in.”

The high desert -- with rising homicide numbers, more gangs, too few detectives -- underscores a trend often overshadowed by the good news about crime in Southern California.

A Times analysis of FBI statistics shows that crime rates rose in some outlying areas at the same time they declined in many of Southern California’s largest cities, led by a 36% drop in the rate of violent crime in Los Angeles.

Property crimes -- including burglaries and car thefts -- dropped 53% in Los Angeles while climbing 19% in Riverside County between 2000 and 2005.

Property crime rates also rose in a quarter of large Orange County cities.

Vehicle theft increased dramatically in several cities, including Moreno Valley, 62%, and San Bernardino, 55%.

The analysis examined crimes per 100,000 people, taking into account population growth during the six years studied.

Even with the increases, these outlying cities recorded far less violent crime overall than Los Angeles. With 807 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, Los Angeles had one of the state’s highest rates in 2005. But rates in several outlying cities, including Riverside, Ontario and San Bernardino, surpassed Los Angeles in property crimes, The Times analysis found.

The trend has become an increasing topic of debate and concern among law enforcement agencies, which are studying patterns to see if it is spreading.

Although some of the increase can be attributed to population increases, that is not a full explanation. For example, the rate of violent crime rose more than 10% over the last six years in several older, built-out cities, including San Bernardino, Huntington Beach, Fullerton, Simi Valley and Downey.

In San Bernardino County and the Antelope Valley, authorities believe that affordable housing has lured residents from the inner city who in some cases bring gang affiliations with them.

Detectives also see a strong link between the rise in burglaries and robberies in some outlying areas and methamphetamine use, which is more popular in suburbs and exurbs than in cities.

In the past, crime waves have generally begun in urban areas and spread outward. Police are asking whether the new figures suggest that a crime trend is now beginning in outlying areas and might eventually move into urban areas.

“Things can’t go down forever, but it’s difficult to tell right now whether crime is trending up,” said George E. Tita, a UC Irvine assistant professor of criminology.

*

The growth in high desert towns, including Adelanto, has been rapid. For most of the drivers who pass through on Interstate 15, there is little reason to stop in this dusty town of 25,000 near the former George Air Force Base.

But affordable housing has helped triple Adelanto’s population since 1990. Dozens of master-planned communities with rows of identical brown stucco houses have sprung up among the tumbleweeds. The average cost of a single-family home in Adelanto -- $310,000 in June -- is less than half that of Orange County and about 40% less than in L.A. County, according to figures from DataQuick Information Systems.

The most recent FBI statistics for cities of fewer than 100,000 have not yet been released, but through 2004, several desert cities, including Victorville, Apple Valley, Barstow, Rancho Mirage and Blythe, showed increases of 10% to 30% in the rate of violent crime.

In the first six months of this year, there have been more homicides in the high desert than during all of last year, according to Britt Imes, a San Bernardino County deputy district attorney who handles gang crimes in the high desert.

Sgt. Galen Bohner, who heads the high desert gang investigation team, said the hunt for L’il George was just one of many gang-related crimes his team has been working, including a homicide at a Victorville nightclub, more than a dozen drive-by shootings during a one-month period in Adelanto and a gang rape in Hesperia by three men believed to be members of the Rolling 60s Crips of Los Angeles.

The unit is grappling with gangs that have fanned out across the high desert. Home-grown gangs, including East Side Victoria of Victorville, the Brown Pride Gang and the Gents of Barstow, are fighting with transplanted gang sects from Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Rialto.

Detectives said the gangs are vying for control of the lucrative drug trade in a region officials have called one of the nation’s biggest meth centers.

“We just don’t have enough people or time to do it all,” Bohner said.

Gang migration from Los Angeles has always been a problem in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, but officials say close monitoring of gangs in Los Angeles, soaring urban housing costs and the lure of unclaimed territory for the drug trade is pushing gang crime farther out.

As wealthier families have moved into Riverside, Fontana and Rancho Cucamonga, where the average residence is selling for more than $400,000, crime rates in those cities have dropped.

Lower prices in high desert towns, including Apple Valley, Adelanto and Victorville, have drawn middle-income families, but they have also attracted real estate investors who purchase new homes and convert them to rentals. The low rent attracts families receiving housing assistance and families affiliated with gangs, Bohner said.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department estimates that there are about 16,000 gang members in the county. The high desert gang detail was relaunched last year, Victorville, Apple Valley and other towns adding gang squads. In San Bernardino, Mayor Pat Morris hopes to hire at least 40 new police officers to help eradicate gang violence.

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office added six gang prosecutors last year; two prosecutors handle gang crimes only in the high desert.

Imes said the relatively inexpensive real estate has also drawn drug dealers who believe they can do business with less scrutiny in the high desert.

“If grandma ... had a two-bedroom house in Compton, when she passes away it’s worth a half million or three quarters of a million dollars. They can come up here and buy a four-, five-bedroom house for half that, new built,” Imes said. “It gets them away from the increased scrutiny that L.A. County and Orange County have put on gangs. They think they can fly below the radar out here. It’s halfway to Vegas, halfway back home to L.A. It’s a convenient middle ground.”

The real victims, Imes and others said, are the law-abiding residents of the high desert who move there for the less expensive housing and in some cases to get away from the crowding and crime of urban areas.

“Families want to get out of that environment.... A lot of them are in self-denial that their kids are involved [in gangs],” Bohner said. “But they come up here and bring it with them. It starts all over again.”

*

The Times analysis also found an upswing in the rates of some types of crime in Santa Ana, an older, predominantly Latino city in Orange County.

A decade ago, Santa Ana police were grappling with an explosion of gang violence with an aggressive program. The results were dramatic: In 1993, the city of 300,000 recorded 78 homicides; last year, the number was 17.

One of the neighborhoods where the crime rate remains high is Bella Vista, a densely built area of apartments and houses wedged between the Santa Ana Freeway and the concrete corridor that carries the Santa Ana River.

In the neighborhood’s gritty alleyways and on its grass-tufted sidewalks, dealers wearing overgrown marijuana leaves on their T-shirts have mostly been supplanted in recent years by meth dealers whispering offers of “tina,” “ice” and “crystal.”

The meth they sell is the start of a crime cycle that authorities have been unable to break. In fact, police acknowledge that more ground has been lost than gained in the fight against the drug.

“We’ve focused on trying to get rid of the labs” that manufacture the drug, said Police Chief Paul Walters. “The effort’s been tremendously successful, but I’m not sure it’s had any effect on the actual rate of addiction.”

Dealers diverted their supply through Mexico or cooked it in household kitchens, police say. That allows distribution of the drug in small doses that are difficult for police to uncover.

Meanwhile, the numbers the department uses to gauge the number of addicts is rising. In 2000, the city recorded 442 arrests for possession of the drug. Last year, the total reached 907.

Walters and others see a clear link between the city’s meth problems and a dramatic jump in vehicle thefts in the city, which rose from 2,052 to 3,583 between 2000 and 2005.

Santa Ana Police Sgt. Lorenzo Carrillo said a common narrative for many of the car theft incidents is that a young gang member needs a ride. After the gas runs out, the car is discarded -- often at Bella Vista’s Jerome Park.

There, the car is usually recovered by its owner. Usually, the thief is not found because evidence is rarely left behind.

Residents who shuttle their children through the streets or use Jerome Park for pickup basketball games say they see another reason for the thefts.

“We’ll see teens joy-riding. They’re speeding up and down the street. More often than not, it’s stolen,” said David Benavides, a neighborhood watch organizer who is raising a 4-year-old daughter and 3-month-old boy with his wife Emily.

Over the last decade, he said, he’s watched gang killings decline, but he said that obscures another reality.

“There are two gangs within blocks of here, and while there may not be as many killings as before, the signs of their many other crimes are still all around us.

“My house got tagged, and meth addiction has never been higher around here,” he said.

*

In Santa Ana, detectives are dealing with crime territories only a few miles across. In the high desert, police struggle to cover a 200-mile territory.

Detectives finally tracked down L’il George, not in Adelanto but 1,750 miles away in St. Louis. They did it by tracking his cellphone calls through global positioning technology.

L’il George, whose real name is DeAnthony George Wilson, is charged with murder and is scheduled to appear in San Bernardino County Superior Court in Victorville for a pre-preliminary hearing Wednesday.

But the gang crime team had little time to celebrate Wilson’s capture.

“It’s a big desert,” said Det. Todd Espindola, the unit’s second in command. “We never catch up.”

Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Crime in Southland cities

The rate of violent crime declined across most of Southern California between 2000 and 2005, according to a preliminary nationwide FBI report covering cities of 100,000 or more. Los Angeles County had the largest decreases in the region. The change was uneven in Orange County, with increases in half the cities.

--

Crime rates

A large percentage decline doesn’t necessarily mean a safe city. Los Angeles has seen violent crimes reduced by 40.3% since 2000, but at 807 per 100,000 population, the city still is one of the most violent in Southern California.

*--* Crimes per % change % change 100,000 population, 2000-05 2000-05 2005

Violent Property Violent Property

Los Angeles County Burbank 232 2,616 -21.0 -8.0 Downey 397 3,152 12.6 9.8 El Monte 568 2,805 -38.7 23.7 Glendale 170 1,856 -55.2 -16.0 Inglewood 900 2,645 -24.1 -7.8 Lancaster 892 3,593 -3.9 41.8 Long Beach 696 2,789 -3.9 -15.7 Los Angeles 807 3,037 -40.3 -15.0 Norwalk 432 2,607 -33.4 6.3 Palmdale 767 3,075 -11.1 1.4 Pasadena 553 3,040 4.7 -15.1 Pomona 773 3,336 -21.0 3.5 Santa Clarita 201 2,144 -17.8 21.9 South Gate 519 2,870 -40.1 9.0 Torrance 218 2,262 -33.3 -17.9 West Covina 313 3,629 -17.2 -7.2

Orange County Anaheim 473 2,806 2.8 0.7 Costa Mesa 271 3,410 4.5 13.2 Fullerton 289 3,423 16.5 13.2 Garden Grove 435 2,661 -6.1 -6.2 Huntington Beach 233 2,063 25.7 0.6 Irvine 82 1,774 -45.7 -14.0 Orange 164 2,522 -37.0 5.2 Santa Ana 527 2,981 -9.0 6.1

Riverside County Corona 221 3,093 -17.0 14.2 Moreno Valley 455 3,771 -38.8 10.6 Riverside 680 4,745 -7.9 23.0

San Bernardino Fontana 458 2,307 -40.2 -15.4 County Ontario 507 3,998 -31.6 -8.3 Rancho Cucamonga 229 2,727 12.8 5.2 Rialto 808 3,531 7.9 8.0 San Bernardino 1,253 5,649 15.0 10.2

Ventura County Oxnard 441 2,361 -18.5 -22.0 Simi Valley 142 1,930 23.7 43.5 Thousand Oaks 137 1,422 -8.6 -2.8 Ventura 281 3,713 -16.2 25.4

*--*

Los Angeles

Violent crime: -35.7%

Property crime: -9.8%

--

Orange

Violent crime: -4.4%

Property crime: 3.7%

--

Riverside

Violent crime: -20.2%

Property crime: 19.1%

--

San Bernardino

Violent crime: -10.6%

Property crime: -0.6%

--

Ventura

Violent crime: -10.7%

Property crime: 4.1%

--

Recent regional explainer graphics are available at latimes.com/localgraphics

--

Note: Violent crimes include homicide and non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, forcible rape and aggravated assault. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, vehicle theft and arson.

--

Sources: ESRI, FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Data analysis by DOUG SMITH