Bank Robberies Occur at a Record Pace : Crime: The 58 since Jan. 1 exceed the total for 1991. Thanks largely to surveillance cameras, 44 have been solved.

Ventura County bank robberies this year already have exceeded the total for all of 1991 and are on a record pace of one holdup every three days, the FBI said Thursday.

The robbery of a Port Hueneme bank Wednesday afternoon was the 58th in the county since Jan. 1. At the current rate, there would be 126 in the county by the end of the year.

That compares to 52 last year and the county’s record high of 76 in 1989, said Gary Auer, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Ventura office.

“A lot of this is because we didn’t catch them fast enough,” Auer said. “They’re repeat robbers. And once it gets started, it builds on itself. The more they get away with it, the more they do it. And then their buddies try it.”

The FBI and local police agencies have solved 44 of the 58 bank robberies this year, Auer said. Those 44 robberies are believed to have been committed by 10 suspects, nine of whom are in custody, Auer said.

As in past years, the bulk of the 1992 robberies have occurred in the west county, where residents of Oxnard and Ventura have held up banks near their homes, Auer said.

“Traditionally, bank robbers in this county rob in their own neighborhood,” Auer said.

Of the 58 robberies this year, 24 were in Oxnard, 17 in Ventura, nine in Port Hueneme, four in Camarillo, two in Santa Paula and one each in Thousand Oaks and Piru.

Wednesday’s robbery of Household Bank at 2671 N. Ventura Road in Port Hueneme is typical of a robber’s clustering of crimes in a small area over a short period of time, Auer said.

The suspect, whose picture was taken by a bank camera, is believed to have robbed the same bank on May 26 and to have held up a nearby Bank of America earlier this month.

Auer said bank robberies are surging upward even though bank surveillance cameras help solve an extraordinarily high proportion of the crimes. About 85% of convicted robbers in Southern California committed the crimes to support a drug habit, he added.

“You have to be essentially brain-dead to be committing bank robberies,” Auer said. “I say that because the solution rates in Ventura County are about 80%, the amount you get in this county averages less than $1,000, and the sentences range from four to 14 years.”

One Ventura County bank robber--Louie Valenzuela of Oxnard--was sentenced to four years and three months in prison this week after pleading guilty in U. S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Valenzuela, 30, was accused of robbing three banks in Oxnard, Newbury Park and Ventura over four months in 1991. He pleaded guilty to two robberies in which losses totaled $2,060.

Since Auer took charge of the FBI’s 11-investigator Ventura office in 1986, he has made it a primary goal to drive down the number of bank robberies countywide.

They generally have decreased, dropping from 71 in 1986 to 31 two years later before increasing to an all-time high of 76 in 1989. Bank robberies were down again sharply for two years--until the recent surge.

Ventura County is part of the FBI’s seven-county Los Angeles region, which is the nation’s bank-robbery capital. With 2,355 offenses, the region had more robberies last year than the next seven highest-ranking cities combined.

Bank Robberies in Ventura County

Year Total 1986 71 1987 60 1988 31 1989 76 1990 43 1991 52 1992* 58

* through June 17