Serious Crimes Off 3% in ‘93, FBI Reports : Offenses: Director Freeh says ‘few Americans will find much comfort’ in such a small reduction.’ Murders are up by 3%.

With Congress poised to enact the broadest anti-crime legislation in a quarter of a century, the FBI said Sunday that serious crimes reported to police dropped 3% last year, extending a decline that began in 1992.

The group of crimes that citizens fear most--violent offenses--went down 1% last year, reversing climbs of 1% in 1992, 5% in 1991 and 11% in 1990.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said that the nation’s crime problems “are so grave that few Americans will find much comfort in a small reduction” in overall reported offenses.

He noted, for example, that the number of murders jumped 3% last year. “The nation must find ways to achieve large crime reductions that are permanent.”

Crime rates in most Southern California cities matched the national trend, according to the preliminary 1993 figures, with Los Angeles showing a 7.6% decrease in reported serious crimes, and Santa Ana showing a 9.5% drop. A few cities experienced higher crime, such as Riverside, which registered a 10% increase last year.

Sociologists and crime-rate experts said it is the changing nature of violence that is generating fear among the public and thus prompting federal lawmakers to act.

Although dramatic slayings, resulting from an increase in firepower, may be only a small portion of total murders, they capture “a large portion of attention,” said Marcus Felson, a USC professor of sociology.

The reduction in reported crime “is not corroborated by people’s experience,” said Gerald M. Caplan, dean of the McGeorge Law School in Sacramento. “We have allowed a situation to develop where semiautomatic weapons are in the hands of early teen-agers, and we have no apparent way of taking those guns away.”

Felson said the driving force in the statistics is property crimes, which dropped 3% nationally. The 1% decline in violent crime, despite the 3% increase in murders being reported last year, reflected drops of 4% in forcible rape and 2% in robbery, with no change in aggravated assault.

The decline in property crimes included 6% fewer burglaries and arson, 4% fewer motor vehicle thefts and a 2% decline in larceny-theft. Cities with populations exceeding 1 million showed the greatest decline, 5%, while rural law enforcement agencies reported a 3% drop and suburban counties a 2% decrease, according to the FBI.

The Northeast posted the biggest drop in reported crime--5%--as against 3% less in the Midwest and 2% less in both the West and the South.

Felson pointed out that the major changes in the U.S. crime rate took place between 1963 and 1980, and that changes since then have amounted to “zigs and zags at a high level. When crime rates have quadrupled, then 2% or 3% up or down after that is a kind of a distraction,” he said.

Caplan, who served as general counsel for the Washington police force and headed the National Institute of Justice before entering the academic world, contended that the character of violent crime is changing. “The drive-by shooting, simply a crime for excitement, is a new phenomenon,” he said. Often, teen-agers involved in such violence “don’t seem to have an accessible conscience,” he said.

He cited personal experiences in the affluent Sacramento neighborhood where he lives. “People don’t park their cars on the street,” and his wife urges him not to take their infant son out in a baby carriage at night, he said.

Despite Congress’ effort, “the bottom line is that crime is largely an intractable problem, more analogous to trying to cure AIDS than to cleaning up rivers,” he said. “We don’t know ways of doing it that are acceptable to enough people.”