O.C. Homicide Rate Up in Some Cities, Down in Others : Crime: Santa Ana, Westminster see steep rises, Anaheim and Orange big drops. Luck, law of averages both cited.

During a particularly violent 14 hours in Santa Ana last month, four young men were shot to death in unrelated incidents in Orange County’s largest city, which has had 43 slayings so far this year.

“You’re always, always concerned when you see that high of a number at this point in the year,” said Santa Ana Police Lt. Robert Helton. “We won’t know what kind of trend we are looking at for a few more months. Will it level off or keep escalating?”

But Santa Ana, which Helton said had a record 59 slayings in 1991 and 58 last year, is not the only city to be experiencing a dramatic rise in homicides.

Last weekend, the discovery of a man’s decomposed body in the trunk of a parked car marked Westminster’s ninth homicide this year, an unprecedented number for a city that historically has only a handful of murders each year.

From barroom brawls to drive-by shootings to domestic violence, a total of 108 people have died at the hands of another in Orange County so far in 1993, according to statistics compiled by the Orange County coroner’s office. The county recorded 186 homicides last year.

“It’s typically young male versus young male over some trivial thing,” said Bryan Vila, a professor of criminology at UC Irvine. “It’s usually that somebody flipped somebody the bird and the fight is on or the shooting starts or someone cuts someone off in traffic or there is a fight over a girlfriend.”

Most of the homicides have been committed by men between the ages of 18 and 29 and most of their victims are young males in the same age range, Vila said.

Santa Ana has already had 12 more homicides in 1993 than at the same time last year. The city had a violent April in which 10 people were slain.

The latest occurred on Monday, when a 16-year-old boy was killed in an apparent gang-related shooting as he stood in the driveway of his home. It was the city’s 23rd gang-related homicide of the year, a number which surpasses last year’s total of 22.

But Helton said that considering the city’s size of 27 square miles and population of more than 300,000, Santa Ana’s murder rate is not extraordinarily high.

“When you compare us to cities of comparable size, our victimization rate is very, very low,” he said. “We have a large amount of people in a very small area.”

Santa Ana had a murder rate of 18.8 per 100,000 residents in 1992, according to the Bureau of Criminal Statistics in Sacramento. This was the highest rate among the county’s larger cities. Anaheim had a rate of 12.3, Orange 7.7, Fullerton and Garden Grove 3.3, Huntington Beach 2.6 and Irvine 2.5.

While most murders in Orange County occur in the seven largest cities, there has been a nearly 100% increase in homicides in Westminster this year, a development that has kept detectives there working round the clock.

“It’s the highest year we’ve ever experienced,” said Police Lt. Andrew Hall.

Hall said the increase in slayings has forced the Police Department, which serves more than 80,000 residents, to spend more time on homicide investigations than ever before. As a result, investigation of lesser crimes, such as burglaries, has had to wait.

“The number of hours required to investigate a homicide (is) often very high,” Hall said. “While you are working on them, all the burglaries are getting colder and colder. It has an extraordinary impact from an organizational point of view on our ability to investigate other crimes.”

Vila said Westminster’s record homicide numbers could simply be “a short-term blip” instead of a new plateau.

“Chance alone can cause extreme variations,” he said. “When you have events that are so rare, they can double in a year or quadruple, then you can have a period where it goes to zero for awhile.”

But Hall, citing an increase in gang violence and more and more residents living under the poverty level, said he sees the increase as an ominous sign.

“In all honesty, while this homicide level might not maintain itself, I look at our demographics and they indicate that this is probably more of a long-term trend than a fluke,” he said.

While the news has been grim for Westminster and Santa Ana, it has been relatively good for Anaheim. The county’s second-largest city, which had 35 homicides last year, has had only 13 so far this year.

“It’s encouraging and we’re glad, but it could just be luck,” said Anaheim Police Lt. Vince Howard. “Our assaults are up, we’ve had drive-by shootings, bar fights, crimes of passion.”

In Orange, where three homicides have been recorded this year, said Police Lt. Timm Browne, luck can also easily be attributed to his city’s low number of slayings.

“We have had many situations that, for the grace of God, could have been homicides and resulted in the death of an innocent party,” Browne said. “There have been incidents where the velocity of a bullet or the distance from which it was fired made the difference.”

Experts say that while strong gang-prevention measures can help reduce violence, there is often little police can do to prevent many homicides.

“Police get blamed for homicides,” said Dick McLeary, a professor of social ecology at UC Irvine. “But they (homicides) are bizarre and a very rare event. In a practical sense, there is really nothing anybody can do about it. There is really no deterrence mechanism that anybody can rely on.”