Santa Paula’s Crime Rate Drops 11.7%

Santa Paula’s crime rate has declined 11.7% in the past year, a drop that city officials attribute to efforts by a volunteer patrol and more aggressive police enforcement.

Serious crimes in the city--including murder, aggravated assault, rape, burglary, arson and theft--were down from 1,595 in 1993 to 1,409 in 1994, according to a Police Department report released this week.

The number of burglaries, which reached an all-time high of 519 in 1993, decreased to 307 last year, the report said. Santa Paula Police Chief Walter H. Adair said the decrease corresponds to an increase in narcotics arrests in the first part of last year.

“People don’t burglarize your house to send their kids to college,” Adair said. “They are burglarizing to buy drugs.”

Adair said that last year he assigned a sergeant and a detective, working full time, to crack down on street drug sales and gang activity. Six months later, in July, the narcotics arrest rate was up nearly 59%, while burglaries had fallen by 57%, compared to the first six months of 1993, he said.

In August, however, because of personnel shortages on the 29-member force, Adair had to take the team off the streets. Subsequently, the number of narcotics arrests fell and burglaries rose during the second half of 1994.

The report also showed that auto theft and robbery decreased markedly in 1994 compared to the previous year.

Reports of domestic violence, however, rose by more than 50%, Adair said. In 1993, 107 cases of domestic violence--including child abuse and spousal abuse--were reported compared to 162 in 1994, Adair said.

Adair said he believed that the incidence of domestic violence in the city has not increased, but that more victims are reporting such crimes in the wake of publicity in the O. J. Simpson case.

“More victims are willing to come forward,” he said.

The report also showed a decrease in the number of false alarms, from 1,058 in 1993 to 794 last year. Adair attributed the drop to police efforts to enforce a policy allowing them to charge fees for responding to such calls. The fees range from $39 for the first call to $125 for the sixth call.

“Once we began to charge people the fee for processing false-alarm calls, they began to take more responsibility by better training their employees and maintaining their equipment,” he said.

Arrests for driving under the influence dropped by 6% from 1993 to 1994, from 191 to 178--the lowest in seven years.

To keep Santa Paula’s crime rate down, Adair said the department needs to increase the size of its force to 32 sworn officers. The department, with an annual budget is $3.1 million, has not hired any new officers since 1991, he said.

But police have come to rely on the Citizens Patrol Unit, a volunteer group created last year.

Residents concerned about increases in drive-by shootings and graffiti vandalism formed the group with City Council approval to help police patrol Santa Paula’s streets.

The city provides the group with cellular phones and the Police Department offered rudimentary training to members, who take turns driving the streets and reporting any unusual event to the police.

So far, the group has logged 1,393 hours, driven 6,236 miles in their own vehicles and reported 124 incidents that led to arrests.

This week, a Tallahassee, Fla.-based research organization that keeps track of more than 3,000 citizen patrol groups nationwide named the Santa Paula program one of the top 25 in the nation, Adair said.

David Johnson, founder of the Santa Paula group, said most members average about 50 hours a month on patrol, on the lookout for graffiti taggers and youngsters breaking the city’s 10 p.m. curfew.

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Crime in Santa Paula

1992 1993 1994 Homicide 2 2 3 Rape 5 10 9 Robbery 50 62 43 Aggravated assault 101 149 113 Burglary 515 519 307 Theft 852 744 841 Auto theft 77 104 86 Arson 8 5 7 TOTALS 1,610 1,595 1,409

Source: Santa Paula Police Department