Simi Valley Serenely Basks in a ‘Safest City’ Rating

How safe is it? Well, in this town, a crime wave might consist of a fast-moving trespasser in somebody’s hot tub.

“A guy on the day watch really got upset. He thought his radio was broken, but there was just so little going on.” -- Lt. Jon Ainsworth, Simi Valley Police

Officer Joe Loniero knows what that’s like. So when his radio crackled with a report of a theft on Millcroft Court the other day, the Simi Valley beat cop started off. He arrived at the scene shortly after 6 p.m., as a distraught Jason Jackman--skateboard in hand--stood outside his family’s ranch-style home with his two sisters.

Jason, 10, reported that his blue Stingray bicycle had been swiped by the kid across the street. The neighbor refused to return the bike until he got the $4.25 Jason had promised him for taking over Jason’s paper route one day.

Problem was, Jason told Loniero, he didn’t have the $4.25. What he had was a sack of Simi Valley Enterprise newspapers waiting to be delivered that evening, and no wheels to get around on.

Loniero, a six-year veteran of the Simi Valley force, talked the neighbor into giving up the bike. He then cautioned Jason to settle his debts in the future, saying, “When you grow up, if you don’t make your car payment, they’ll take your car.”

A Typical Uneventful Night

The flap over Jason’s bike was Loniero’s closest brush with excitement that night. A slow evening is all too typical for the 85 Simi Valley police officers who uphold the law in a city acutely lacking in serious lawbreakers.

“Every policeman wants to go out and just do something exciting,” said Loniero, 27, as he drove a black-and-white patrol car down Los Angeles Avenue, Simi’s main street. “But this is not Rampart, where crazy stuff is going down all the time. We just don’t get a lot of real violent stuff.”

Let other cities grapple with soaring crime rates. Simi Valley--on the eastern edge of Ventura County--was recently named the safest city of its size in California for the third year in a row, according to an FBI computation of major crimes committed during 1985 in cities with populations of 60,000 to 100,000.

The FBI considers major crimes to be murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, vehicle theft and arson.

1 Major Crime per 32.7 Residents

The annual report from the FBI, published in July and titled Crimes in the United States, notes that in 1985 one major crime was committed for every 32.7 residents in Simi, a city with a population of about 93,000. By contrast, the national average was one crime for every 19.2 residents, and California’s average was one for every 15.4 residents.

Simi’s first-place ranking has helped to bolster the image of a department once tarnished by citizen complaints about officers’ excessive force and misconduct.

It has also spotlighted the transformation of a department that, in its infancy in the early 1970s, shared offices in the former City Hall building on Cochran Street, and made its officers wear green or light blue blazers and drive white cars. Now, the department has its own headquarters, traded the white cars for black-and-whites and exchanged the blazers for more traditional uniforms, achieving a more professional image in the process.

Upgrading Was Top Priority

“Kids will wave at the officers now, and if they pull up to a stop, someone will nod rather than give them an obscene gesture,” said Simi’s Mayor Elton Gallegly, who said improving the force was a top priority when he became mayor six years ago. Gallegly said the police department spends 40% of the city’s $16.7 million annual budget.

Placing first on the FBI’s list of safe smaller cities has focused attention on another of Simi Valley’s distinctions: more active law enforcement officers live there than in any comparable-sized city in the state.

But don’t try to make a connection between the two.

Simi’s Police Chief Lindsey (Paul) Miller insists that the city’s first-place safety record has little to do with its relatively large number of police citizens.

If anything, he said, reasons are the city’s naturally law-abiding residents and its historic role as a bedroom community. Its being surrounded by hills also helps to make Simi as undesirable to big-city crooks as a tour of Sing-Sing.

“Unless you live and work here, there is very little reason to be here,” Miller said. “Besides, we can seal off the city. You can’t hold up a gas station here and just meld into the metropolis.”

Still, having a lot of cops in the neighborhood can’t hurt, figures indicate.

The U. S. Bureau of the Census said 1980 statistics show that out of a total of 36,320 employed persons over the age of 16 in Simi, 952 said they worked in fire- or law-enforcement agencies in Ventura and Los Angeles County. Local police officials insist that a more accurate number is more than 2,000, counting retired law-enforcement officers and those who have settled in Simi since the 1980 census was conducted.

Second and third on the list of comparable-sized cities with a hefty population of active law enforcement officers are Thousand Oaks with 869, and Daly City in the San Francisco Bay Area, with 735.

Thousand Oaks and Daly City also ranked second and third respectively behind Simi Valley as the safest cities in the state with populations of 60,000 to 100,000. Last year in Thousand Oaks, one major crime was committed for every 30.5 residents; in Daly City, it was one for every 27.9 citizens.

“There may be some correlation there, but it’s mainly coincidence,” Gallegly said. “But having a high percentage of police officers in the city certainly does not hurt your crime statistics.”

Simi’s Attractions

Why law-enforcement officials, including FBI agents, state police and sheriff’s deputies, flocked to Simi Valley may be traced to many officers’ aversion to living in the same city they work in.

“A lot of guys . . . are afraid they are going to run into somebody they’ve arrested while they are off duty and out with their family,” said Officer Joe Loniero.

In the early days, Simi Valley’s attraction was its inexpensive housing in an area only a 30-minute drive from Los Angeles, say several police officers who made the move.

Detective Tony Loniero, Joe Loniero’s father, said he chose Simi Valley because he needed a large, affordable house for his five children after moving the family to Los Angeles when the Pittsburgh, Pa., steel mill he worked in closed down in 1964.

Attractive Housing Prices

“They were just starting to build out there,” recalled Loniero, supervisor in the Van Nuys forgery division of the Los Angeles Police Department. “I paid $17,000 for my four-bedroom house back then. If I were in L.A. I could have expected to pay $8,000 more.”

Detective Russ Pungrchar, who also works in the LAPD forgery division, moved to Simi in 1970 “to get out of the hustle, bustle of daily traffic and congestion.”

Unlike many others, Pungrchar believes the large number of police officers living in Simi Valley is a factor in its record as the safest city of its size in the state. “The policemen who live out there all work various hours, so there are a lot of us coming and going in the community. You know, you’re a policeman 24 hours a day.

“In addition,” Pungrchar adds quickly, “Simi Valley has one of the finest police departments around.”

Poor Reputation in ’83

If that is the case now, it wasn’t so just a few years ago. A final report of the 1983-84 Ventura County Grand Jury concluded that the public perception of the Simi Valley Police Department was largely negative, and its reputation as a law-enforcement agency was damaged.

Numerous lawsuits had been filed against the department charging misconduct by officers. There was one reported rape of a woman suspect in a holding cell at the Simi Valley jail, but the district attorney never filed charges in the case.

“Basically, it was a breakdown of confidence in our police department in the eyes of the community,” Simi Mayor Gallegly said.

Miller, who worked in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department for 20 years before he was brought in to replace former Police Chief Don Rush at the height of the problems, said he believes the department “wasn’t as bad as people said it was, although there were still some problems.”

The chief said he got rid of the “few problem people” who were giving the department a bad name, formed a management that set goals for the department and gave “clear direction that I expected people to follow.”

But the credit goes largely to Simi’s residents, who tend to be “more law-abiding,” Miller said. “We rely on people to take care of themselves.”