County Crime Rate Rises by Just 1% in ’92 : Law enforcement: Officials project a 7% increase in Oxnard, but reports of serious offenses dropped in Ventura, Port Hueneme and Camarillo.

Ventura County crime apparently increased again in 1992, but the steep jumps of the two previous years disappeared, and reported crime even fell in Ventura, Port Hueneme and Camarillo.

Preliminary figures indicate that serious crime, led by sharp increases in Oxnard and Santa Paula, was up about 1% countywide during the past 12 months. That compares with an average annual increase of 8.6% in 1990 and 1991.

Ventura County remains among the nation’s safest urban areas. But an upward spiral in crime in the 1990s has knocked the county from its traditional spot as the safest non-rural county in the West.

“Things look a little better now. At least it’s slowing down,” said David Keith, a crime analyst in Oxnard. “The 1980s were so good to us. Then, wham, it was like the whole thing just changed direction in ’90 and ’91.”

With a projected increase of about 7% in 1992, Oxnard crime has increased 31% in three years to about 10,600 offenses--or 35% of the county’s total.

Keith said that much of the surge is due to youth gangs and drugs.

“The crimes we’re seeing are more violent,” Keith said. “Some people say the recession plays a role, but I’m not convinced that your laid-off aerospace worker goes out and robs banks. We’re talking about more gang activity, and drugs are a big part of it too.”

Oxnard’s violent crimes--murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults--have doubled since 1989. Though the increase has slowed, robberies were still up 27% last year. And misdemeanor assaults--which are not included in crime reports but which reflect gang activity--were up 59% in 1992.

By contrast, the Sheriff’s Department, which patrols five cities and county unincorporated areas, experienced a drop of about 5% overall in 1992, assistant Sheriff Oscar L. Fuller said.

Most of that decrease was in Camarillo, where a rash of burglaries and thefts that pushed up property crime 63% in two years finally subsided with the arrest of several serial thieves from Los Angeles County.

“We’re hoping to see at least a one-quarter drop in property offenses in Camarillo,” Fuller said.

Fuller’s projections--and those of most other police officials last week--were based on reported crime through November compared with the same period in 1991. Figures for December are not yet available. Oxnard’s projections were based on statistics for the first 10 months of 1992.

Final crime statistics will be released over the next several weeks by police in Oxnard, Simi Valley, Ventura, Port Hueneme and Santa Paula.

The Sheriff’s Department--which polices Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Moorpark, Fillmore and Ojai--expects to release its figures by the end of the month.

Crimes counted in the reports are murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, vehicle theft and arson--those that match the FBI’s annual nationwide report.

Preliminary reports show a countywide increase from 30,000 serious crimes in 1991 to a projected 30,300 in 1992.

The reports show increases of about 7% in Oxnard, 6.7% in Santa Paula and 2.5% in Simi Valley. Crime dropped about 1% in Ventura and 15% in Port Hueneme.

The Sheriff’s Department did not release figures for specific cities, except for the 25% drop in Camarillo’s property offenses, which make up nearly all of the city’s crime.

Countywide, the preliminary figures show progress, officials said. Homocides are down from 48 to 32 in a year. And drug arrests are up by more than 25%.

Several officials said the county’s two-year crime wave has slowed because shellshocked citizens are more alert to crooks and because some of the right people are behind bars.

Santa Paula Police Chief Walter Adair Jr. said the city was headed toward a double-digit increase in crime until key arrests were made.

“We had the wrong people out of jail for a while, and now they’re back in jail,” he said. “We had a couple of extra addicts out there for a while doing 15 burglaries a month. And that really throws your rates high.”

Burglaries were up from 388 to 473 in Santa Paula for the first 11 months of last year, compared with 1991.

In Ventura, vandals broke dozens of car windows and burglars rifled many homes in hard-hit neighborhoods, re-energizing citizen groups, Police Capt. Pat Rooney said.

“It gets people’s attention,” Rooney said. “There has been a real resurgence of Neighborhood Watch.”

Special city programs--and new tracking and wheel-locking devices--have made it harder for thieves to steal cars, which helped cut auto theft 18% in Ventura last year, Rooney said. Car thefts were down even more in Port Hueneme and Santa Paula.

Fuller, the assistant sheriff, said his department has also had some success in curbing thefts and burglaries by catching Los Angeles County crooks lured by the prosperous white-collar communities of the east county.

“Those are the kinds of people that give us the biggest problems as far as statistics are concerned,” Fuller said. “They’ll come into town and over a couple of weeks commit a hundred or more crimes.”

Sheriff’s investigators arrested two Van Nuys men in 1991 who officials think committed 600 Ventura County thefts over six months.

Simi Valley crime analyst Debra Ruud said that a spate of robberies early last year illustrated how a single criminal--regardless of origin--could skew statistics.

Simi Valley had a 17% robbery increase in 1992. But of the 10 robberies that constituted the increase, seven were committed by a man dubbed the “Pizza Bandit” because he robbed pizza parlors.

Simi Valley officials said they counted the city’s modest overall increase of 79 offenses as a success, since the jump was far lower than in 1990 and 1991 and because of the turmoil in Simi Valley last year.

“We would have preferred no increase,” Police Lt. Dick Thomas said. “But given what has happened in greater Southern California in these 11 months, we feel very fortunate that the increase wasn’t worse.”

Thomas noted that Simi Valley was the site of the trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating motorist Rodney G. King and was also the site of two emotional rallies by white supremacists.

“Considering the Los Angeles rioting, we think we had a pretty good year,” he said.

Though 11-month figures were not released for Thousand Oaks, a midyear FBI report on large cities showed that crime was up there by 3.3% through June.

While east county police said crime has slowed because they’re arresting more Los Angeles criminals, Port Hueneme Police Chief Robert A. Anderson said he doesn’t know why serious offenses dropped sharply in his city last year.

Through November, Port Hueneme had 769 serious crimes compared with 901 for the same 11 months of 1991. That nearly 15% drop compares to a 45% increase the two previous years.

“I really don’t know why,” Anderson said last week. “We’ve done the same things this year as we did last year.

“There has been a media blitz about locking cars and closing garage doors,” he added. “But next year at this time, I’m liable to be sitting here answering questions about why it’s up so high again. And I’ll say, ‘Well, I guess they didn’t lock their cars.’ ”