Overall Crime Down, but Violence Up 19%

For the first time in seven years, overall crime in San Diego is down.

For the seventh straight year, violent crime is up.

Those statistics, unveiled Wednesday before a City Council committee, show that property crime--burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft--dropped 3.7% in 1990. Property crime accounts for about 90% of all crime that occurs in the city.

Conversely, violent crime--homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault--was up 19% in 1990 compared to 1989.

Overall, crime was down 1.4%, and the crime rate, which measures crimes committed per 1,000 population, was down 4%.

Addressing the council’s Public Services and Safety Committee on Wednesday, Police Chief Bob Burgreen expressed pleasure at the downturn in overall crime and distress at the continued violence.

“I’m happy about the decrease in property crime and not pleased about the increase in violent crime,” he said. “But we’re talking about people who are strung out on drugs who are committing these crimes.”

According to police figures, violent crime has nearly doubled since 1985. The city nearly broke its criminal homicide record in 1990, but, even at 135 homicides, San Diego is at the bottom of the 10 largest cities in homicides per 1,000 residents.

Detroit ranks first, with .53 homicides per 1,000, followed by Dallas (.44), Houston (.36), Philadelphia (.32), New York (.30), Los Angeles (.29), Chicago (.28), San Antonio (.23), Phoenix (.15) and San Diego (.12), police said.

Burgreen described the problem of violent crime as he has done before: too many drugs and too few jails. Eighty-five percent of people booked into jail have drugs in their system, he said.

The upsurge in violent crime was the most dramatic increase since 1985, when it rose 36% from the year before. For 1990, robbery was up nearly 21%, aggravated assault rose 19%, homicides increased nearly 12% and rape increased 7%.

Those figures troubled City Council members who serve on the public safety subcommittee.

“I wonder if there could be . . . an effort to focus on the safety of people just as there is an effort to focus on the safety of property?” said Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt, who said last October that she does not feel safe in San Diego.

“I don’t want to pass the buck,” Burgreen said. “But when there are jails coming out of the ground that will hold these people, the numbers will come down. I predict that.”

Each of the county’s six jails are severely crowded, and, although a section of a proposed new East Mesa jail is scheduled to be finished this month, the money to operate it is still in question.

Money collected under the Proposition A sales tax referendum of 1988 was challenged, its opponents saying it required a two-thirds majority, in keeping with tax-cutting Proposition 13 of 1978. Proposition A passed by a slim margin.

Furthermore, the East Mesa jail sits on property that was owned by developer Roque de la Fuente II, who is now embroiled in a court fight with the county over the property’s value.

A further problem, Burgreen said, is the inability of police to book people suspected of misdemeanors.

The Police Department had hoped to have the county lease the city 5 acres of the East Mesa land on which to operate one module of the prison. In turn, the city would sublease the module to a private security company to build and operate a prison to book misdemeanor arrests.

With the De la Fuente property tied up in court, the city-leased module is on hold.

Faced with no jail space, the Police Department does not book people cited for misdemeanors. As a result, there are 661,357 outstanding misdemeanor warrants, or cases in which those cited have failed to appear in court. The warrants have an estimated value of $78 million.

Councilman John Hartley said new jail space is only one solution in trying to grapple with crime.

On Wednesday, he called for a task force to study alternatives to jail for nonviolent offenders and to look at the possibility of establishing honor camps, electronic surveillance, work furlough programs, halfway houses and other measures.

In addition, the city should establish a tough vagrancy law, a greater emphasis on the community policing its own neighborhoods, and more drug counseling groups, Hartley said.

The City Council is working up a package of proposals for fighting crime, including the designation of 230 elementary, middle, junior and secondary schools as “drug-free zones,” and is seeking state legislation that would add three to five years to a prison term for people convicted of selling or buying drugs on school property.