SIMI VALLEY : Police Report Slight Hike in Some Crimes

Thefts and burglaries in Simi Valley increased slightly, while robberies and assaults decreased in the first six months of 1994 compared with the same period last year, according to statistics released Friday by the city’s Police Department.

There were 869 thefts and 311 burglaries reported between January and June 30 of this year. But in the first six months of 1993, residents reported 832 thefts and 301 burglaries--a drop of about 4% in both types of crime.

The police report also says that robberies decreased from 25 to 19, a drop of about 24%, and that assaults fell by 8.4% from 204 to 187 incidents reported in those periods. Residents also reported 185 car thefts, a decrease of 7.1% from last year’s six-month total of 199. But forcible rapes increased from seven in the first half of 1993 to nine during the same period of 1994, a 28.6% rise, the report said.

There was one slaying in the first six months of this year--the February stabbing of teen-ager Chad Hubbard--but none in the same time last year, the report shows.

The report also shows that the value of property stolen in the first half of 1993 went from $2,135,620 to $2,178,666 in 1994--a 2.1% increase. And it shows that the value of recovered property increased by 62.5% over the first half of last year, from $367,772 to $597,347.

“I don’t think that there’s really that big a change in the statistics,” said Sgt. Mike King, spokesman for the department. “There’s nothing we can attribute that to except that no crime trends caused a dramatic increase, and our aggressive anti-crime efforts continue to keep the crime rate low.”