County Crime Falls to Lowest Levels Since ‘60s

Ventura County crime fell last year to levels not seen since the 1960s, as a sharp drop in violent offenses buttressed the county’s status as the safest urban area in the West.

Reported serious crime was off 3.5% countywide in 1995, partly because of extraordinary reductions in felony assaults in Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Oxnard--a sign, police said, of a crackdown on youth gang activity.

“It’s the gangsters that should have to duck and dodge and look for cover,” said Sheriff Larry Carpenter, whose department patrols five cities and the unincorporated areas. “And we’re gaining on it.”

The county’s 25,262 major crimes in 1995 were about 5,000 fewer than were reported just four years before, when offenses reached an all-time high.

Over the same period, the county crime rate has fallen from 43.7 crimes per 1,000 residents to 35.1. The state and national rates--both far higher than the county’s--have also dropped, but less dramatically.

“Society is fed up with youth gangs having their way,” said Richard Thomas, police chief in Ventura, where violent offenses dropped 24% last year. “People who were reluctant to talk to us years ago are now helping us solve cases.”

Throughout the year, police continued to press strategies that staunched an early 1990s crime surge. They suppressed gangs through special units and persistent raids, targeted drug users to reduce theft, opened more community storefronts, and deployed citizen patrols to guard their own neighborhoods.

Beefed-up police budgets have also put more officers on the streets, officials said.

For example, a multimillion-dollar annual budget boost from Proposition 172 has resulted in 50 more patrol officers for the Sheriff’s Department. And in Oxnard, the force has grown to 179 uniformed officers, up 31 in three years.

“It’s given us an opportunity to respond better to our problems,” said Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt, whose city has reported a 20% drop in crime since 1992. “This city has made public safety its No. 1 commitment, and we’ve continued to reduce the crime.”

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Perhaps the most significant development over the last year, however, has been the 6.8% reduction in felony violence--murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Unlike the previous two years, when crime rates declined mostly in categories that have little to do with personal safety, last year was marked by drops in acts of mayhem.

“It certainly is encouraging,” Undersheriff Richard Bryce said. “I think the three-strikes law is starting to have an effect. And domestic crimes are down. Women specifically are more aware of the protections the law has for them, and they’re using them.”

Attacks by one family member on another still account for one of every 10 serious assaults.

Crime’s downward four-year spiral is welcome relief to a county that was reeling in 1992, following a 17% surge over the two previous years. Crime increased in every local community in 1990 and 1991. But without exception, all 10 local cities now have crime rates below their peaks.

Still, the last year was partly defined by senseless violence. Oxnard youth gangs ended a relatively peaceful two-year period with a flurry of drive-by shootings. Two Simi Valley children were slain by their father on Father’s Day.

In all, nine children and teenagers were slain in 1995, an unusually high number that compares with the county’s total of 26 homicides for the year.

As violent crime increased at the year’s end, however, communities across the county added more citizen patrols to take to the streets at night and strengthened their anti-gang efforts.

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For the last four years, police agencies have fought youth gangs collectively as a countywide task force, sharing intelligence and moving at a moment’s notice to raid gang members’ homes.

“We’ve really made some significant strides in reducing gang activity,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, who acts as Thousand Oaks’ police chief.

In shrinking violent crime in Thousand Oaks to its lowest level in a decade, in fact, arrests by the city’s full-time, eight-officer gang unit almost doubled last year to about 160, she said.

“Each patrol area has a gang liaison officer, and we have a liaison with the schools. The intelligence they gather has prevented a lot of things from happening,” she said.

Just recently, she said, a gang liaison officer arrested three juveniles suspected of about 30 incidents of graffiti, defusing a potential gang confrontation.

“Those kinds of cases keep this from escalating to where they drive by one another’s house and shoot,” she said.

Indeed, the county’s four largest cities--Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Ventura and Oxnard--are all spending more time and money to attack gang violence.

Simi Valley, which has the lowest violent crime rate of all local cities, targets gangs and other special problems with a seven-officer enforcement unit that costs the city about $500,000 a year.

“These officers don’t have any other assignments,” Simi Valley Capt. Jerry Boyce said. “They target designated crime problems. It works, but it’s very expensive.”

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Simi Valley’s serious assaults dropped from 169 to 123. But in a year of mixed results, the city experienced increases in murders, rapes and robberies.

Ventura is a case study of how an on-going emphasis on gang crime--and reaching out to the community through police storefronts--can finally result in improvement, Thomas said.

Shaken in 1994 when it inherited the designation as the local city with the highest crime rate from Oxnard, Ventura saw that rate fall from 54.9 crimes per 1,000 residents to 46.1 last year.

That represented a reduction of 12.8%, or 681 crimes, including a drop of 102 serious acts of violence. The Ventura crime rate is its lowest in a decade, even though the city still has the highest rate of theft and burglary in the county.

“Gangs are our No. 1 priority,” Thomas said. “With one exception, we have solved every single significant gang incident in the city in the last seven years.”

That unsolved crime is the slaying of a Ventura High School football player three years ago.

Reflecting the strategy of departments countywide, Ventura’s special enforcement team focuses on gang activity. That squad has up to eight officers, compared to a total of 118 for the department. Opening police storefronts in four communities over the last three years is also reaping rewards, Thomas said.

“All of this was like a buildup to a partnership with the community,” he said. “And now we’re seeing the payoff.”

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Police in Oxnard, Fillmore and Thousand Oaks also have opened storefronts to attack crime pockets head-on. The Sheriff’s Department uses a mobile storefront mounted on a trailer.

And police officials said the advent of aggressive citizen patrols--in Oxnard, Santa Paula, Fillmore and Thousand Oaks--continued to make a difference last year.

Thousand Oaks has 50 citizens in its Volunteers in Policing program started last February. About 35 patrol the community in uniforms and marked cruisers, Kemp said.

In Oxnard, Hurtt said spotlight-wielding citizen patrols have spread from one neighborhood to 32 in four years.

“One of the key successes we felt we had last year was starting a tenant patrol in a public housing project,” he said. Only seven Oxnard neighborhoods are now without such patrols.

The new crime statistics show that Moorpark, the county’s richest city, maintained its position as the most crime-free community last year.

And Oxnard, traditionally the county’s most dangerous city, retained that position despite a 4.7% reduction in violent crime last year. Oxnard’s violent offenses represented 47% of the county total, although its population is just 21% of the total.

Moorpark had a rate of only 19 crimes per 1,000 residents, while Oxnard’s was 2 1/2 times higher.

The Moorpark and Oxnard totals reflect the difference in crime rates between the affluent communities of the east county and the older cities of the west county.

The east county, which has about 38% of the county’s population, had just 27% of its crime and only 18% of its violent offenses last year.

The west county’s crime rate was 41 offenses per 1,000 residents, compared to 25 per 1,000 in the east. Both areas fared well compared to the most recent statewide rate of about 62 per 1,000 and a national rate of 54 per 1,000.

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Of the three east county cities, crime was down 6.7% in Simi Valley and 5.7% in Thousand Oaks, but rose 1.9% in Moorpark.

Kemp said Thousand Oaks, in addition to cutting violent crime by 16%, has made strides against thieves, especially those who break into stores and automobiles.

“We’re working with business to make sure they provide adequate lighting and cut shrubbery at the shopping centers,” she said.

In Simi Valley, a 6.7% drop in property crime was accomplished mostly by reducing auto thefts from 418 to 327, thanks to the arrest of out-of-town criminals.

“Almost every time we catch a group doing something systematic, they are from L. A. County,” Boyce said.

In the west county, crime was down 12.8% in Ventura, 8.7% in Port Hueneme, 6.7% in Santa Paula and 2.6% in Oxnard. It rose 4.5% in Fillmore and 7% in Ojai. And it surged 43% in Camarillo, where violence was up nearly 21% and property offenses rose about 45%.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Ray Abbott, who serves as Camarillo’s police chief, said most of the 503 additional crimes were burglaries and thefts at large apartment complexes.

As in Simi Valley, Camarillo has been victimized by out-of-town crooks. About half of the adults arrested are not from the city, Abbott said.

“Around Christmastime, we watched a carload of young men drive down the street and test the car doors,” Abbott said of four Oxnard youths arrested later. “They’d hop out and take everything from laptop computers to cellular phones to loose change.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

County Crime Trends, 1992-95

Crime Overall

* Context: County usually has the lowest crime rate of any urban area in the western U.S.

Crimes per 1,000 residents

1992: 42.7

1993: 38.3

1994: 36.9

1995: 35.1

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Violent Crime

* Context: Oxnard’s share of county’s total was nearly 47%

Crimes per 1,000 residents

1992: 5.5

1993: 4.8

1994: 4.7

1995: 4.3

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Property Crime

* Context: Camarillo’s total soard 45%, while Ventura’s dropped more than 12%

Crimes per 1,000 residents

1992: 37.2

1993: 33.5

1994: 32.2

1995: 30.8

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Ventura County Crime Report

Crimes per 1,000 Residents, 1995

Violent Crime:

Property Crime:

Total Crime:

Moorpark

Violent Crime: 2.1

Property Crime: 17.3

Total Crime: 19.4

*

Thousand Oaks

Violent Crime: 2.2

Property Crime: 22.4

Total Crime: 24.6

*

Fillmore

Violent Crime: 4.6

Property Crime: 22.6

Total Crime: 27.2

*

Camarillo

Violent Crime: 2.0

Property Crime: 25.8

Total Crime: 27.8

*

Simi Valley

Violent Crime: 1.9

Property Crime: 16.5

Total Crime: 28.4

*

Port Hueneme

Violent Crime: 5.0

Property Crime: 28.0

Total Crime: 33.0

*

Ojai

Violent Crime: 4.3

Property Crime: 33.8

Total Crime: 38.1

*

Ventura

Violent Crime: 3.2

Property Crime: 42.9

Total Crime: 46.1

*

Santa Paula

Violent Crime: 6.6

Property Crime: 41.9

Total Crime: 48.5

*

Oxnard

Violent Crime: 9.3

Property Crime: 41.1

Total Crime: 50.4