High Fives for Irvine, Huntington Beach : * One Young, the Other a Scruffy Veteran, Have Right Stuff in Safe-Cities Sweepstakes

Congratulations to Irvine for making the top 10 in what amounts to an annual safe-cities sweepstakes. And an equally big salute to Huntington Beach, which ranked 12th. The rankings are taken from the annual FBI listing of major crimes in cities of 100,000 or more residents.

In some ways, Irvine had an easier time of it. After all, it’s new (founded in 1971) and it’s planned. Officials said the city’s planners had public safety on their minds from the start. That’s one reason they separated the residential areas from busy streets, to make a criminal’s getaway harder. The city’s police chief calls Irvine a “model city” that’s an example for planners across the country on how to build a city from scratch.

By contrast, Huntington Beach is one of the county’s older cities (founded in 1909), and was noted in its early days for waterfront brawls and bordellos. The city has long had a scruffy image, stemming from seedy downtown hangouts and riots at beach volleyball tournaments. Concerns about crime led the city this month to close its municipal beach at 10 p.m. instead of midnight. And state statistics showed that crimes in the city increased last year.

But recent years have brought a sprucing up of much of Huntington Beach, and the FBI figures, which unlike the state’s take into account a city’s population, are welcome news.

The police chiefs of both cities correctly credited the public for helping out. Said Huntington Beach Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg, “You can go out there and work as hard as you want, but if you don’t have the support of the community it’s not going to do anything.”

He’s right about that. And while Irvine had the benefit of designing a city to combat crime, its Neighborhood Watch programs are a boon. Huntington Beach shows the benefit to an older community of enlisting community support. The good news is Neighborhood Watch programs and community policing work.