FBI’s New High Desert Office Is a Trip Saver : Law enforcement: An official says agents can be spending time fighting the rise in crime instead of wasting it on the long drive from Westwood.

In past years, investigating a defense industry fraud case in the Antelope Valley meant a “road trip,” in the FBI’s parlance--an arduous 120-mile round-trip freeway haul from the agency’s Westwood regional office that ate up much of the workday.

These days, however, the three agents manning the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new Antelope Valley office are so close that they can hear the jets screaming aloft from Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale. And giant Edwards Air Force Base is little more than half an hour’s drive north.

That kind of high-profile presence, FBI officials say, will mean better law enforcement and service for the new office’s 2,500-square-mile area, which covers the Los Angeles County portion of the Antelope Valley, the Santa Clarita Valley and Edwards Air Force Base.

Although FBI agents still investigate violent crimes such as bank robberies, bureau officials said their focus is increasingly on white-collar crime involving failed financial institutions, fraud in the defense industry and even political corruption. The new office will handle both violent and white-collar crimes.

“A big part of the reason we’re up here is to be a little more responsive to the community,” said Gary Auer, the Ventura-based supervisor of the new north county office. Agents’ time will be better spent working in the area instead of driving back and forth from Westwood, Auer said.

Another reason for establishing the new office, FBI officials acknowledge, is the presence of the Antelope Valley’s two huge military installations: Edwards, which houses the Air Force’s flight test center, and Plant 42, a center for major aerospace contractors. The FBI investigates both government contract fraud and foreign espionage on American soil.

Auer said he believes that in the Ventura area where he works, the financial squeeze on the defense and aerospace industries has led to more illegal activities and thus work for the FBI. However, Auer said he could not say whether there have likewise been more illegal activities in the Antelope Valley.

Also behind the FBI’s move to open the new office has been the north county’s huge population increase during the past decade, which brought more demand for FBI work and made agents’ commutes from Westwood more troublesome. For example, Palmdale’s population increased 461%, to 68,842 people, by 1990.

FBI officials would not provide specific statistics reflecting what they said has been their increased workload in the north county in recent years. However, Auer said that according to a recent tally for the area, the bureau had 41 open cases involving violent crimes and 14 involving white-collar crimes.

Indicative of the increase, though, are county sheriff crime reports. In the Antelope Valley, reports more than doubled, from 15,748 to 33,357 between 1984 and 1990. In the Santa Clarita Valley, they nearly doubled, from 9,258 to 18,297, an FBI spokeswoman said.

The new FBI office--for now just a single room--opened Oct. 21 in the back of a state parole office on Sierra Highway in Palmdale. Auer said the agency has decided to lease permanent space in Lancaster to be near other law enforcement offices and the courts, with the move possible in the spring.

The office is the first new “resident agency,” or field office, that FBI officials can recall opening in the region in years. It becomes the 12th such office in the FBI’s seven-county Central District, which covers about 40,000 square miles from Santa Maria to Palm Springs.

Years ago--and even FBI officials cannot remember exactly when--the agency opened an office in Lancaster and staffed it with one agent. The bureau closed it in the spring of 1984, after he retired. In recent years, all FBI work in the north county had been handled by agents sent from Westwood.

But as the north county grew, more agent time was being spent in the area and that led to plans for the new office. When the proposal was sent back to Washington for approval, the FBI officials figured that the area has enough work for five agents, but they decided to start out with three.

The decision was good news for many of the FBI agents already living in the area and hoping to cut their commutes. “Dozens” applied for the three jobs, Auer said. Like many others, FBI agents have been attracted to living in the north county by its moderate housing prices, FBI officials said.

Special Agent Douglas Ziser, a four-year veteran who handles financial and defense-oriented crimes, said he had been facing up to three-hour round-trip commutes from his Antelope Valley home to the Westwood office in recent years, even though his assignments were in the Antelope Valley.

Heading the new office is Special Agent William M. Ayers, a 20-year veteran and Santa Clarita Valley resident who’s been working traditional crimes, such as bank robberies, in the north county since 1984. Along with Ziser, Special Agent Jack R. Schafer is an Antelope Valley resident.