Simi Valley Ranks as Safest of Big Cities in U. S. : Statistics: Community tops FBI list for 1993 after serious crime falls 18.4%. Thousand Oaks places third.

Simi Valley was the safest city in the United States with a population of at least 100,000 last year, according to figures released Sunday by the FBI.

Simi Valley’s ranking marked the fourth time in five years that a white-collar community in eastern Ventura County has topped the nation’s list of safest large cities.

Thousand Oaks, which ranked first in 1989-91, was third in 1993, FBI crime and population figures show.

The Los Angeles County suburb of Santa Clarita ranked fourth.

Simi Valley, in displacing Amherst Town, N. Y., as the safest urban area, had a serious crime rate that fell 18.4% in 1993 due to citizen involvement, a surge in arrests of drug users and a police crackdown on theft rings from the San Fernando Valley, officials said.

“It’s nice to be recognized again as the safest city in America,” said Mayor Greg Stratton, noting previous designations in the mid-1980s. “It restores what we had--(a reputation) that we have a really great place to live and do business, and where you can still walk the streets at night.”

Simi Valley’s image was tarnished in 1992 after a jury sitting at the East County Courthouse acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of assaulting Rodney G. King, sparking the Los Angeles riots.

A recent fatal schoolyard stabbing of a 14-year-old boy by another student has also heightened fears about youth crime in Simi Valley.

But the FBI statistics put residents’ growing fear of crime in a different perspective, Stratton said.

“Our crime totals are back to where they were five or six years ago,” he said. “I think a lot of what we’ve seen has been a wash-over from the opening of the freeway to Los Angeles. People started to realize there was this nice place called Simi Valley that was fresh pickings. We started to get a lot of out-of-town criminals.”

Reported major crime grew steadily to 3,547 offenses in 1992, or 34 per 1,000 residents. But last year, the total dropped to 2,892, or 27.8 per 1,000, because of sharp drops in burglary, theft and auto theft. Even violent offenses--already extremely low--declined slightly, to 257, with no murders.

Police said three or four San Fernando Valley theft rings were busted last year, which alone could have resulted in hundreds fewer crimes. In a similar situation two years ago, Camarillo police credited two Van Nuys gang members with 600 thefts.

Simi Valley Police Chief Willard Schlieter said the 1993 improvement could be the result of many more arrests by a street narcotics unit that was doubled to six officers. An expanded anti-gang patrol also helped, he said.

“It’s the overall street visibility,” Schlieter said. “And part of it is the nature of this community. It’s not so much an affluent community that wants to buy its way out of crime; it’s a community that really wants to get involved in fighting crime.”

Neighborhood Watch groups are expanding, he said.

Thousand Oaks, which each year vies with Simi Valley for low-crime bragging rights, also had a drop in crime overall, from 3,374 to 3,276.

“We’re fortunate that we have an overall reduction,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, the top officer in Thousand Oaks. “And we had a relatively small increase in violent crime. But the type of crime is a concern because it’s by our youth--it’s gang members.”

Confrontations between teen-agers increasingly end in violence, she said. In February, two Westlake High School students were wounded in an after-school fight at a park. Two of the four youths charged with assault and illegally discharging a firearm are gang members.

A communitywide anti-crime symposium Saturday will address the problem of rising youth violence in Thousand Oaks, Kemp said. But she said the community remains relatively crime-free because of the extraordinary involvement of residents in Neighborhood Watch.

Oxnard, Ventura County’s largest city and one of its poorest, had a crime rate about average for the nation last year. But its crimes per 1,000 fell from 67.3 to 58.1 in 1993--the most dramatic decrease in the county.

Overall, Ventura County had a crime rate of 38.3 per 1,000 residents last year, off about 9% and better than the nationwide 3% decrease, the FBI reported.

Other low crime rates in California included Irvine’s 40 crimes per 1,000 residents, Fremont’s 40.6 per 1,000, Sunnyvale’s 41.4 per 1,000 and Glendale’s 44.4 per 1,000.

Of the state’s 10 largest cities, San Jose had the lowest crime rate, 45.7 crimes per 1,000, while Santa Ana had 64.2 per 1,000.

Oakland had the highest rate among the largest California cities with 117 crimes per 1,000 residents, followed by Fresno, 115 per 1,000; Sacramento, 104 per 1,000; San Francisco, 90 per 1,000; Los Angeles, 88 per 1,000; Long Beach, 81 per 1,000, and San Diego, 74 per 1,000.

San Bernardino had the highest rate among all cities in the state with more than 100,000 residents--132 crimes per 1,000 residents.

10 Safest Cities

Lowest crime rates for United States cities with populations of 100,000 or more:

Crimes per 1,000 City Population* residents SIMI VALLEY 103,943 27.8 Amherst Town, N.Y. 106,885 28.7 THOUSAND OAKS 108,232 30.3 Santa Clarita 114,756 34.3 Livonia, Mich. 102,387 39.0 Sterling Heights, Mich. 119,606 39.3 Irvine 114,433 40.0 Fremont 179,785 40.6 Sunnyvale 121,588 41.4 Glendale 186,734 44.4

* Population estimates are for 1992

Source: FBI