County Still Has Lowest Crime Rate in West, FBI Says

Ventura County remained the safest urban area in the West in 1995 after crime fell for the fourth straight year, according to new FBI figures. Reported county crime dropped 2.9% last year, reaching levels not recorded here since at least the 1960s.

The FBI report shows that Ventura County easily retained its distinction as the urban area with the lowest crime in the western 13 states. That is largely the result of extraordinary reductions in felony assaults in Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Oxnard.

Earlier this year, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley ranked first and third on a list of the most crime-free cities in the U.S. with populations of 100,000 or more.

“Part of the reason is that we have citizens that are involved not just in Neighborhood Watch, but in our Volunteers in Policing program,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, who functions as the Thousand Oaks police chief. “They are making a tangible difference.”

Ventura County reported 35.7 crimes per 1,000 residents, down from 37.1 the year before and 43.0 in 1992, according to the FBI’s Crime in the United States report released this week.

The counties of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo ranked second and third in the West, with crime rates of 39.5 and 40.2 offenses per 1,000 residents, respectively.

They were followed by Cheyenne, Wyo., 41.0; Santa Clara County, 42.4; Fort Collins, Colo., 44.1; Bremerton, Wash., 44.8; Olympia, Wash., 45.3; Provo, Utah, 45.5, and Orange County, 46.7.

Those rates compare to California’s rate of 58.3 crimes per 1,000 and the national rate of about 53 crimes per 1,000. Los Angeles County had a rate of 61.4 offenses per 1,000, and its violent crime rate was three times higher than Ventura County’s.

This county’s 25,190 reported crimes were 754 fewer than the year before and about 5,000 lower than in 1991, when offenses reached an all-time high.

Crimes counted in the FBI report are murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, theft, burglary, vehicle theft and arson.

Kemp cautioned that Thousand Oaks crime for the first half of 1996 is up from last year’s unusual low, and that residents should not be surprised with an increase at the end of the year.

“It just shows you, we may be the safest city in the nation but we still can’t relax,” she said.