Shifting Police’s Focus

Crime takes no holidays, but sometimes the types of offenses criminals are committing are less serious. Instead of murders, burglaries prevail. Drug sales become more common than robberies.

Much of Orange County is in that relatively happy situation now, thanks to several years of declines in the most serious crimes. That has enabled police to go back through files of unsolved crimes and to try to prevent new crimes with innovative programs.

There also is an emphasis on fighting crimes that police might not have gotten to several years ago. An Orange County deputy district attorney said that in the early part of the 1990s police were discovering 10 to 15 laboratories each year in which methamphetamine was manufactured. Now the number is more than 100 each year. Why? “We were never looking for these things before,” the prosecutor said. “Now we are.”

That’s happening in Buena Park too. That city’s police chief, Richard M. Tefank, says the arrest rate is higher than it’s ever been, although arrests for serious crimes reported to the FBI, including murder, rape and robbery, are lower than ever. The reason for the high arrest rate is increased emphasis on relatively minor drug offenses, many involving use or possession of methamphetamine.

Police say they can’t crack down on small crimes when all their time is consumed solving serious offenses. But in semi-peaceful periods, they can practice the “broken windows” theory popularized by UCLA professor James Q. Wilson.

Wilson outlined those views in a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article, saying that broken windows, weed-filled vacant lots, panhandlers and graffiti are markers of a neighborhood’s decline. He called for police to maintain social order, not just solve crimes, and to undertake what now goes by the name community policing.

As has proved true in Orange County and elsewhere, a drop in crime rates does not always equal a public that feels safer. Perception is important. People can feel more secure if graffiti is erased, boarded-up houses refurbished and gang members removed from the streets.

UC Irvine urban planning professor Mark Baldassare noted last year that despite the drop in violent crime in the county, most Orange County residents still were fearful. Baldassare said people’s anxiety about a county becoming more dense and more socially diverse probably contributed to their fear of violent crime. People may believe that as the county becomes more urban, crime will become more prevalent, even if that is not necessarily true.

But even if perception is lagging, the reality of a drop in violent crime is welcome. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to pinpoint all the reasons for the decline.

The causes of crime are complex. Unemployment, poverty, drugs and the availability of weapons all play parts. Also, as the number of men in their late teens and early 20s declines, so usually does crime.

Police in Orange County who don’t have to spend as much time pursuing murderers and rapists can devote more resources to quality-of-life issues such as abandoned cars or public drunkenness.

Laguna Beach Police Chief Jim Spreine said with the decline in major crimes has come the public expectation that police will crack down on lesser crimes. Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters agreed, saying big backlogs of crimes to be investigated have in the past stopped police from spending much time on other offenses.

Santa Ana is one of a number of Orange County cities practicing community policing, in which police get out and around in the community rather than waiting in patrol cars or station houses to respond to crimes already committed.

Community policing allows officers to build up neighborhood contacts who can become sources of information. A uniformed presence also can be an effective deterrent.

Seeing police on the streets also is likely to help the perception match the reality of declining crime rates, providing a sense of security for residents.

Police tactics go in and out of fashion. What counts to the police and the residents they serve is what works. Getting criminals off the street, or better yet, stopping crime before it occurs, is the goal.