Area Posts Lowest Crime Rate Ever, in Line With Trend

Ventura County was a safer place to live last year than it was in the early 1970s, according to crime statistics released by law enforcement agencies across the county.

Despite small increases in Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Santa Paula, overall crime in Ventura County continues a long-term downward trend, reflecting state and national declines and ensuring that the county will maintain its distinction as one of the safest urban areas in the West, officials said.

Both the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the Ventura Police Department said their 1996 crime rate was the lowest they have seen since they began keeping records in the early 1970s.

One of the more dramatic aspects of the decline, said Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Bob Brooks, is that not only has the rate decreased but the number of crimes reported has also dropped--even as the population almost doubled in the past two decades.

“We don’t take all the credit or all the blame with crime stats, because we realize that it’s a real complex mix of elements that contribute to those changes,” said Brooks, whose department patrols Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Camarillo, Fillmore and Ojai in addition to unincorporated parts of the county.

Ventura Police Chief Richard Thomas echoed those views. “We don’t live and die by yearly changes in crime stats.”

But Thomas added: “These numbers are consistent with a long-term trend . . . and that’s good.”

Officials in Simi Valley--which has consistently had one of the lowest crime rates in the nation--said its 1996 rate was low enough to rank it as the safest city over 100,000 population in California and possibly the safest city of that size in the United States.

“We’re really proud of that,” said Simi Valley Police Chief Randy Adams. “We couldn’t have done it without the support from the City Council and the residents of the city, and a lot of hard work from the men and women on this department.”

Most of the agencies attribute the declines to increased citizen patrols and beefed-up police budgets, but the crime-rate reductions follow similar trends across the state and country.

California’s crime rate dropped by more than 12% in the past year to the lowest level since 1968, according to officials with the California Department of Justice.

In early March when the state figures were released, California Atty. Gen. Daniel Lungren said the state’s drop in crime had outpaced declines elsewhere in the nation. He attributed the results to the passage of 1994’s “three strikes” law.

But many experts on crime trends attribute the declines to changing demographics--particularly an aging population, said Daniel Glaser, a sociologist and professor emeritus at USC.

The downward trend both in the nation and in Ventura County will probably reverse itself in the late 1990s, as teenagers and young adults begin to make up a greater proportion of the population, Glaser predicted.

Officials from all over the county said the good news about the drop in overall crime is tempered by increases in juvenile crime--especially violent crime among younger offenders, which reflects nationwide trends.

Of the 17 homicides in Oxnard in 1996, eight of the victims and most of their suspected killers were under age 20.

The Sheriff’s Department recorded a 14.8% increase in juvenile crime, which follows the trend seen in the county since 1988, officials said.

Although overall violent crime was down in most jurisdictions, Ventura experienced a 25% growth in violent offenses--with large increases in robberies and assaults.

That year-over-year change is attributed in part to the extremely low volume of violent crime recorded in 1995, Ventura officials said. They emphasized that the rate of violent crime is still much lower than it has been for most of the past decade.

Across the county, the number of homicides jumped from 26 in 1995 to 34 in 1996--still below the numbers of 1993 and 1991. Oxnard recorded half of all the homicides in the county in 1996.

Both the California Department of Justice and the FBI collect and compile crime data. The FBI issues an annual report in the fall that breaks down felony crime for cities and counties in the United States.

Ventura County has consistently ranked as one of the safest urban areas in the West, with both Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley among the nation’s safest cities over 100,000 residents.

In Ventura County, Moorpark--with a population estimated at 28,416--again had the lowest crime rate in the county. And Oxnard’s rate was again the highest, with Santa Paula coming in second and Ventura third.

While there were few surprises in the numbers, several departments pointed to anomalies.

The Sheriff’s Department, for instance, saw a big jump--more than 40%--in the number of arson fires, which officials attribute to a handful of serial arsonists.

For example, one arsonist is believed to have started as many as 15 fires in Thousand Oaks in one month last year, said Capt. Mark Ball.

The two departments that had overall increases--Port Hueneme and Oxnard--saw decreases in violent offenses but jumps in property crimes. Oxnard saw thefts and auto thefts rise.

“We really don’t understand that one,” Police Chief Harold Hurtt said. “Property crimes are generally crimes of opportunity, and we’ve had such an increase in the number of citizen patrols and Neighborhood Watch programs that you would think that number would have gone down.”

Hurtt is most concerned about getting a jump on juvenile crime. This week he and officials with the county Probation Department went to Sacramento seeking funds for a program to track juvenile offenders through the system and set up community-based programs to mentor such offenders. The goal is to stop them from committing more serious crimes.

“We’re lost, I think, if we don’t start talking about prevention and intervention,” Hurtt said.