Police Shifting Focus as Crime Drops in O.C.

With serious crime plummeting across Orange County in the past five years, police officers now have the luxury to tackle less-dangerous offenses, more thoroughly investigate the most difficult cases and take a fresh swipe at cold files.

In some cities, police are able to head off smaller headaches before they develop into migraines. In others, officers have the luxury of spending their time on lesser crimes and minor annoyances such as drug possession and loud parties. Still others say the extra time has allowed detectives to solve more murders.

In Buena Park, for example, arrests for crimes reported to the FBI--murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft--are lower than they’ve been since 1975. But the overall arrest rate is the highest in the department’s history.

Police Chief Richard M. Tefank attributes the jump to increased emphasis on relatively minor drug offenses, many related to the use or possession of methamphetamine.

Orange County Superior Court Judge David O. Carter has witnessed the same trend in his courtroom, as police become more aggressive in dealing with nonviolent offenses.

Over the last few years, Carter said, the number of felony cases in his courtroom has risen dramatically even though violent crime has been dropping. Many of the new cases are lower-grade, nonviolent crimes, many involving the use or sale of illegal drugs.

“Police departments seem to have more time to deal with these types of crimes and work more in the community,” Carter said. “Ten years ago, resources may have been too short to look at these things.”

The dropping crime rate is also giving police more time for proactive drug investigations, said Carl Ambrust, deputy district attorney who heads the narcotics enforcement team.

In the early ‘90s, he said, police found 10 to 15 methamphetamine labs a year. Now, they are finding more than 100 annually.

“We were never looking for these things before. Now we are,” he said.

Crime in Orange County’s eight largest cities declined by 13% last year--dropping at three times the national average. It was the fifth consecutive drop in county crime.

When crime is high, police have little choice but to follow the traditional model of responding to the crime, trying to solve it and then moving on to the next one, Santa Ana Chief Paul M. Walters said.

With police spending less time chasing robbers, rapists and murderers, they are turning their attention to minor annoyances like loud music or abandoned cars.

“It’s probably not a difficult thing for us to say we prioritize our calls. We’ll get to it when we get to it. If you have robberies and burglaries that keep bumping it to the bottom, we may not get to it,” said Jim Spreine, Laguna Beach police chief. “Now that we don’t have as many of these major crimes, we shouldn’t be bumping you down on the feeding chain. Now that we have the time, the public expectation is we do it.”

At the same time, many departments are using the breathing room to prevent major crimes by going after minor offenses--the “broken window” method of crime prevention. The theory is that if a community is well-maintained, it is less likely to be a target of crime.

New York police have enthusiastically embraced the tactic, cracking down on prostitutes, public drinkers and those who hop subway turnstiles. The theory is that people who break those laws will eventually violate more serious ones.

Orange County is quickly embracing the tactic.

“It’s so simple sometimes, but people wouldn’t think this way” in the past, said Lt. Charlie Chavez, who runs the Anaheim Police Department’s Community Policing team.

A few years ago, police might be called to an apartment complex over and over because of parties and drug dealing--never addressing the larger problem. “We’d flood the area with police and walk away from it,” Chavez said.

But when a similar problem arose recently at a group of apartment buildings near Haster Street and Orangewood Avenue, the city banned parking on five streets to make it more difficult for criminals.

In Santa Ana, police work with community groups to make sure houses are painted, lawns manicured and abandoned cars towed away. “Those signs of disorder will lead to serious crime,” Walters said.

Residents are embracing the approach, especially the department’s recent effort to crack down on people who play music too loudly. Santa Ana police sent a letter to all residents this month warning that officers will confiscate stereo equipment and impose fines on those who repeatedly bother their neighbors.

“It’s about time,” said Nora Velasquez, an office clerk who lives south of the Santa Ana Civic Center. “People can be rude and not care about the people who live next door and have to work. . . . Having the police help keep the block quiet helps everyone out.”

Because detectives have fewer crimes to solve, they can spend more time if cases need the effort. John Conley, assistant district attorney in charge of the major offenses division, said the result is that more murders are being solved in Orange County.

Walters said the same thing is happening in Santa Ana. “Many times in the past we’d have a tremendous backlog,” he said. “We wouldn’t get to spend a lot of time on cases because of the volume. As far as detectives able to address things more thoroughly, they can follow more leads.”

The extra time gives some departments a chance to go back to unsolved cases.

“We have old homicide cases,” Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Garner said. “We go through those files periodically. Now we have more time to go back into those old files. You never know when crime is headed up, and you’re busy then.”

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