In 2 Years, Charges Up 64% at Area Courthouse : San Fernando: Officials are at a loss to explain the increase in the number of criminal filings, which is the largest shown by any Superior Court district in the county.

The number of criminal charges filed in San Fernando Superior Court has risen nearly 64% since 1988--the largest jump of any court in Los Angeles County--but judges, prosecutors and police were at a loss Wednesday to explain the increase.

Prosecutors blamed a rise in crimes in the court’s suburban area. But although police acknowledged that crime in the San Fernando Valley has increased slightly and arrests are up, they have not jumped that drastically.

Even Superior Court Judge David Horowitz, who prepared the report for the presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, could not explain the source of the increase.

But in the courtrooms, “It’s an explosion more than just a general increase,” said Horowitz, who for the last three years supervised criminal courts in the county.

The leap is more than double the countywide average increase of about 31% since 1988, said Horowitz, who now hears cases in Van Nuys Superior Court.

Horowitz’s report compares criminal cases in county Superior Courts during the first seven months of 1988 with those in the first seven months of 1990, the only months for which statistics were available when he began research. During that time in San Fernando, the number of criminal charges filed jumped from 1,400 to 2,288. South Central Superior Court in Compton showed the second-largest increase, growing 56% from 1,982 in 1988 to 3,092 in 1990.

Judges and prosecutors interviewed Wednesday were unable to explain the increase, except to say that crime has increased in the suburbs that feed cases to the small, Spanish-style courthouse in San Fernando.

“People are more violent,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth Barshop said. “Society is more violent.”

Police acknowledged that crime has steadily increased in the Valley but said their statistics do not account for the dramatic leap in criminal filings.

Deputy Chief Ron Frankle, who oversees the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Bureau, said major crimes in the three divisions that provide the bulk of the courthouse’s cases--Devonshire, Foothill and North Hollywood--have increased only slightly more than 2% since last year. He said the increase between 1988 and 1989 was about the same.

Frankle said arrests for major crimes in those divisions increased about 7% in the first 10 months of 1990, compared with the same period in 1989, from 8,606 to 9,181.

Officials at the district attorney’s office said the area from which the San Fernando Courthouse gets its cases has not been expanded or redrawn since the facility was built in 1983.

Although the three Los Angeles Police Department divisions provide most cases, the courthouse also handles arrests by the San Fernando Police Department and the Santa Clarita Valley station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Prosecutors decide whether charges are filed after an arrest. Frankle and Horowitz said it is possible that the district attorney’s office is bringing charges in a greater proportion of arrests or charging individual defendants with a greater number of crimes.

In addition, another report said the courthouse handles a higher percentage of murders than any other in the county. On average, out of every 100 cases filed, 4.5 are murders, Barshop said. By comparison, South Central Superior Court handles three murders per 100.

More than 100 murder cases--20 of which are death-penalty cases--currently are awaiting trial in San Fernando.

The five courtrooms where criminal trials are heard are routinely overloaded and criminal cases sometimes must be sent to the building’s four civil judges. Already, the average time between filing of a criminal case and its disposition is 113 days, the longest in the county.

Because the courthouse handles a higher percentage of serious crimes such as murders that lead to lengthy trials, the average case there takes longer to complete, Barshop said. Murder cases can take from one to four years, according to court files.

Horowitz said the numbers in his report are a signal that the criminal court system is rapidly becoming overloaded. He, Barshop and others said more prosecutors and judges will be needed to handle the increase in cases.

Horowitz also urged greater use of plea-bargaining, “consistent with the proper representation of the prosecution and defendant,” to avoid costly and time-consuming trials.