County Crime Rate Still Falling

Ventura County remained the safest urban area in the West in 1997 after crime fell for the sixth straight year to levels not seen in two decades, according to new FBI figures.

Crime dropped nearly 6% to 22,030 offenses last year, as the county retained its distinction as the urban area with the lowest crime rate in the western 13 states.

Reported offenses have now fallen 25% since 1992, reflecting similar trends in California and the nation.

“We’re on the bottom side of this downward trend and that’s certainly a good sign,” said Sheriff Bob Brooks, whose department patrols five of the 10 local cities.

The sharpest reductions last year were in Simi Valley, Santa Paula, Thousand Oaks and Ventura. And violent crime continued to plummet in Oxnard.

Earlier this year, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley ranked first and second on a list of the most crime-free cities in the U.S. with populations of at least 100,000. And Moorpark is even safer than those bastions of law and order.

Authorities attribute that to the fact that residents are generally older, and so less prone to criminal activity than they were just a few years ago.

But police also say the county is blessed with communities that have citizen patrols and officers who get out of their cars and into neighborhoods.

“When you take a look at what’s happening out there you’ll see the importance of community policing,” Brooks said. “And it’s a countywide phenomenon.”

Oxnard, for example, has more than 1,000 people involved in citizen patrols, compared to only a few volunteers five years ago.

The Sheriff’s Department has also seen its volunteers skyrocket with 2,000 residents now participating in Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Moorpark, Fillmore and Ojai.

Through a 12-week Citizen Academy training program started in 1993, the department recruits uniformed volunteers to patrol neighborhoods unarmed and call in sworn officers when they spot potential lawbreakers. “They’re the eyes and ears for us out there,” Brooks said. “And they help out by writing incident reports so deputies can do enforcement work.”

Ventura County reported 30.5 crimes per 1,000 residents in 1997, down from 43 five years earlier, according to the FBI’s new Crime in the United States report.

The counties of San Luis Obispo and Orange ranked second and third in the West, with crime rates of 31.1 and 35.4 offenses per 1,000 residents, respectively.

They were followed by: Santa Barbara County, 36.6; Santa Clara County, 37.8; Ft. Collins-Loveland, Colo., 40.9; Pocatello, Idaho, 42.3; Grand Junction, Colo., 42.8; Olympia, Wash., 43.6; and San Diego County, 44.2.

Those compare to California’s overall rate of 48.7 crimes per 1,000 residents and the national rate of about 49 crimes per 1,000. Los Angeles County had a rate of 47.4 offenses per 1,000, and its violent crime rate was three times higher than Ventura County’s.

Most impressive in Ventura County are the continuing drops in violent offenses.

Murder, rape, robbery and felony assault decreased about 13% last year, and Oxnard accounted for much of that reduction. The five-year drop in violence countywide is 28%. And the county’s violent crime rate is now less than half of California’s.

In the years to come, however, Ventura County must brace for a demographic shift that will almost certainly mean more crime nationwide: Numbers of teenagers are expected to rise rapidly before peaking about 2003 or 2004, Brooks said.

“So we’re concentrating on prevention programs, too,” he said. “All those kids are in the pipeline. And we want to help them.”