Crime Kept Dipping in Early ‘98, Though Fullerton Had Spike

While the total number of major crimes in Orange County’s eight largest cities continued to drop during the first half of the year, violent crimes in one of the cities--Fullerton--jumped 15% compared with the same period last year.

Fullerton Police Chief Patrick E. McKinley said he had not seen the numbers and could not explain them.

In Huntington Beach, violent crimes increased by 12%, but Jim Moore, the Police Department’s information services manager, said the figure was wrong because the person reporting the data erroneously counted all domestic violence cases as aggravated assaults.

Overall, the crime rate gauged by the FBI decreased by an average of 6% in Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Orange and Santa Ana.

Violent crime, which includes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, fell 11% from the first six months of 1997 in Orange County, while the drop nationally was 7%.

Property crimes--burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft--dropped 5% in the same period in the county, a like number as seen in the rest of the country.

The FBI, which collects crime data under its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, released the figures Sunday for cities with populations of more than 100,000. Local police departments provided the figures to the FBI.

The statistics showed that Irvine and Orange ranked among the 10 safest cities in the country. The safest was Amherst Town, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo. California cities grabbed eight of the top 10 places nationwide, with Irvine sixth and Orange ninth. All 10 cities are wealthy suburbs.

Anaheim, with a drop of 33% in violent crimes and 16% overall, showed the largest decreases in the county in both categories.

Police across the country have credited tougher sentencing laws, an aging population, a good economy and community policing with bringing crime to a 30-year low.

When the Orange County crime rate is adjusted for the increase in population, it has dropped seven years in a row, according to state Department of Justice figures.

In Anaheim, said Police Chief Randall Gaston, the decline has been two to four times greater than the national average each of the past five years, even though the city’s population has increased.

He credited much of the improvement to the department’s concentration on about 12 high-crime areas, not only with more officers, but with closer ties to those communities.

He also gave credit to a program in which parole officers, probation officers and prosecutors work in the same office, keeping closer tabs on people already convicted of crimes. He said the program has especially helped cut gang-related crime.

James Alan Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston, said that since young men commit most crimes, the country probably will continue to get safer as the population ages, with one-third of the nation hitting 50 or older in the next decade. Besides harsher sentencing laws that put more adults behind bars, he said, some of the cut in crime can be credited to liberalized divorce laws and more shelters for women, both of which have helped lessen domestic violence.

While the homicide level nationally has continued to drop, most of the decrease has been among adults, Fox said, and it remains higher among young adults than it was 30 years ago.

Nationally, every region in the country showed a decline in serious crime. The Northeast led with a drop of 8%, followed by the West with 6%, the South with 5% and the Midwest with 1%.

Other large drops in the county were registered in Garden Grove, where violent crimes fell by 16%, and Costa Mesa, where they fell by 9%.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

America’s 10 Safest Cities

Lowest crime rates for cities with populations of 100,000 or more for first six months, 1998.

*--*

Crimes per City Population 1,000 residents Amherst Town, N.Y. 112,431 8.72 Simi Valley 106,974 9.26 Thousand Oaks 113,368 9.86 Santa Clarita 125,153 11.50 Sunnyvale 125,156 13.65 Irvine 127,873 14.45 Rancho Cucamonga 116,613 15.01 Glendale 184,321 15.06 Orange 119,890 15.16 Livonia, Mich. 105,099 15.19

*--*