Major Crime Is Up 15.2% in 1st Half of ’86

Major crime in San Diego rose 15.2% during the first six months of 1986--the biggest jump in at least 15 years, San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender reported Wednesday.

Kolender, appearing before the City Council’s Public Services and Safety Committee, called the trend discouraging and blamed the escalating rate on several factors, including increased drug trafficking, the influx of illegal aliens and transients, and overcrowded county jails.

“We’re just shoveling sand against the tide,” Kolender said about his department’s efforts to fight crime.

The double-digit increase represents a dramatic change for San Diego, according to Police Department statistics. If it continues unabated, the crime rate will show the steepest incline since the Police Department recorded a 14.6% jump in 1974, Assistant Chief Bob Burgreen said.

During the early 1980s, crime actually dropped. But it began to pick up slightly and increased 5.5% last year before it took off during the first half of 1986.

While homicides in 1986 remained steady compared to the first six months of last year, robberies, rapes, aggravated assaults and car thefts jumped appreciably, Kolender said.

Rapes increased 20.5%. And aggravated assaults increased from 1,430 to 1,926--a 35% increase that Kolender said resulted, in part, from a new state law that requires that all cases of domestic violence be reported.

Robberies were up 34%, with the department handling 500 more cases than the comparable period last year. Car thefts went from 4,704 to 6,272--a 33% hike.

As he has in the past, Kolender blamed the bleak statistics--particularly robberies--on a growing web of drug dealers and addicts, as well as the influx of illegal aliens and transients to San Diego.

“This is due to drug users needing money to buy drugs, to drug deals that go bad and turn into robberies (and) to the increased number of robberies of aliens by other aliens at the border,” Kolender said.

The chief also said a “hard core” of illegal aliens is using “public transportation to commit crimes in all parts of the city. It is relatively easy for certain criminals to take the bus to more affluent areas, accomplish a burglary and return by bus.”

Kolender’s report raised objections from Herman Baca, chairman of the Committee on Chicano Rights, a human rights organization in San Diego.

Baca said Kolender’s blaming illegal aliens, in part, for San Diego’s crime problem is racist and a “cheap tactic to increase the racist hysteria in the community.”

“It manifests that Bill Kolender is no longer in control of his department and he’s using scapegoating tactics to cover up his incompetency in dealing with the issue of crime in the community,” Baca said.

Police officers, meanwhile, are making 41% more felony arrests, Kolender said Wednesday. But people apprehended for lesser crimes are being ticketed and let go because there’s not enough jail space to hold them, Kolender said.

“The jail is unable to accept all of the suspects brought by police officers,” Kolender said. “For January to June, 1986, there were 8,845 of these suspects cited with booking. . . . These include suspects arrested for offenses like being under the influence of drugs, thefts and--the one that still gets me--for failure to appear warrants.”

Kolender’s report provided the perfect prelude for yet another presentation by County Supervisor George Bailey, who appeared before the committee Wednesday seeking support for a proposed half-cent sales tax increase.

The increase, proposed by the county, will appear on the November ballot and would pay for doubling the amount of courts downtown and tripling the amount of jail space throughout the county, Bailey said.

“We must be known as an area that is tough on crime,” Bailey told council members. “Unless we are, with the other attractions in this area, we’ll have a booming crime problem in the next few years.”

Council committee members voted, 5-0, to endorse the sales tax increase. The full council will now vote on the endorsement.

A law enforcement official in the border town of Brownsville, Tex., agreed with Kolender that the combination of drug trafficking and illegal aliens can translate into an increase of crime.

“We’re seeing a tremendous increase in the amount of crimes committed, not by illegal aliens who come and go back to Mexico, but by illegal aliens coming in employed by the dopers to carry the dope across the river,” said Cameron County Deputy Sheriff Carlos Tapia.

The result has been a marked increase in homicides in Brownsville, which he estimated has a population of 120,000. The city borders Matamoros, Mexico, with an estimated population of 300,000.

Tapia said there were two or three homicides in all of 1985. But during the first six months of 1986, there have been 14, he said.