S.D. Crime Rate Up; Drugs, Lack of Jails Blamed : Report: Overall crime is up 8%, but some kinds of serious crime have declined, Police Chief Burgreen reports.

San Diego’s crime rate rose 8% during the first nine months of this year, despite significant declines in the number of rapes and murders, Police Chief Bob Burgreen said Wednesday.

Burgreen reported progress in curbing gang-related drive-by shootings but noted a sharp increase in the number of citizen reports of drug activity in their neighborhoods. He also said that a recently completed department study shows that 16% of all suspects arrested for felonies are undocumented aliens.

In a familiar refrain, Burgreen told a San Diego City Council committee that his officers continue to be hamstrung by jail crowding that prevents them from locking up people arrested on misdemeanors, even those charged with violent crimes, before arraignment.

Burgreen said there are now 580,000 outstanding warrants for arrestees who have failed to appear in court, about one for every four county residents. He said that one misdemeanor suspect recently tore up an arrest citation issued by a police officer and spat in the officer’s face. The officer wrote another ticket, Burgreen said.

“It’s very difficult to go out and police the streets when the people you are arresting know full well what you can and cannot do to them,” he said.

Councilman Bruce Henderson, endorsing Burgreen’s call for more jail space, said that “truly, among the professional criminals in this town, there is the understanding that crime pays, and there is going to be no punishment.”

Burgreen said that city officials will request proposals within 30 days from private firms willing to build and operate a pre-arraignment detention facility, but have not decided how to fund the jail, which will cost an estimated $4 million a year.

Burgreen’s quarterly report on crime, delivered to the council’s Public Services and Safety committee, showed an 11.9% decline in murders during the first nine months of 1989 from the same period last year. The number of rapes dropped 7%, but robberies rose 13.5% and aggravated assaults increased 9.8%

Despite a 9% increase in automobile theft, Burgreen asserted that creation of the department’s Auto Theft Strike Unit last November has curbed what once was a much greater rate of increase. The unit has made 335 arrests this year.

He said drug-related crime continues to be the city’s top law enforcement problem and reported that the number of citizen tips of drug activity received by the department’s narcotics unit rose from 350 in January to 450 in September.

“We’re knocking them off as fast as we can , but they’re cropping up faster than we can knock them off,” Burgreen said.

Burgreen credited the department’s Special Enforcement Division, which targets street gangs, for a sizable decrease in gang-related drive-by shootings. There were 78 in the first nine months of 1988, but just 49 in the same period this year, he said.