Crime Still Falling in Most Parts of County

Ventura County crime continued to fall during the first half of 1999, as eight of 10 cities reported year-to-year reductions and only Moorpark and Ojai showed an increase.

Overall, serious offenses dropped to 9,258 from January through June, down nearly 15% from the first six months of 1998 and about one-third lower than the county’s all-time high eight years ago.

That means there were 1,586 fewer crimes during the first half of 1999 than during the same period a year before, and about 5,000 fewer than were reported at midyear in 1992.

Most of the recent reductions came in burglary, theft and auto theft. But murder, rape, robbery and felony assault also continued to drop, falling 10% countywide.

“We’re doing better because we’ve taken a different approach in law enforcement,” said sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, who serves as police chief in Thousand Oaks. “Now we understand that we can’t do it alone. We’ve got to involve nonprofit agencies, the schools and the community.”

While the falling local crime rate reflects a trend in the region, state and nation, Ventura County is already the safest urban county in the West, according to FBI statistics. Its crime rate is about half that of the state and far below the nation as well.

The most remarkable local drops this year were 49% in Fillmore, 22% in Port Hueneme, 19% in Ventura, 16% in Thousand Oaks, 14% in Santa Paula and 13% in Simi Valley.

In Fillmore, police have used a citizens-academy approach developed in Thousand Oaks to train Spanish-speaking immigrants--who often distrust law enforcement--to be allies in the war on crime, officials said.

“We designed the courses to educate people about what public safety offers them in the United States,” said Cmdr. Chris Godfrey, who headed the Fillmore sheriff’s station until last week. “They had a different perspective of police. Their attitudes went from apathy and dissatisfaction to support.”

A second key tool in Fillmore has been the unannounced rousting of young criminals with probation searches at all times of the day, Godfrey said. That has resulted in arrests of repeat burglars and thieves, and a dramatic drop in those crimes.

As a result, he said, total serious crimes in Fillmore plummeted from 251 offenses to 128 by midyear--including a drop in burglaries from 93 to 32 and thefts from 108 to 66.

A second small city, Port Hueneme, also saw a big improvement in serious crime, which fell from 403 offenses a year ago to 314 at the middle of this year. Felony assaults fell from 33 to 12, burglaries from 94 to 69 and auto thefts from 38 to 19.

Santa Paula made inroads as well by cutting violent crime by one-fourth, from 117 to 88.

“The officers have targeted certain individuals and activity, and when you take the leadership out of the gangs, they lose the momentum,” Police Chief Bob Gonzales said. “But this is cyclical. And we’re seeing some of these guys coming out of jail again right now.”

Among the county’s large cities, Ventura made the most impressive percentage gains, slashing overall serious crimes by 385 for the period by sharply cutting burglary and theft.

“These changes are huge,” Ventura Lt. Gary McCaskill said. “One thing is that we’re interacting more on the streets. We have three storefronts, a very active gang-suppression unit and we’ve made a push to get our people out of their cars.”

Ventura has returned to the cop-on-the-beat approach, assigning officers to the same area for a year at a time, instead of rotating them frequently as in the past, McCaskill said.

“They get to know the citizens,” he said, “and they get to know the people who have problems. Perhaps it’s working.”

Already ranking as the safest large city in America, Simi Valley saw its serious crimes drop again from 999 to 867, off 13%. That included a 28% reduction in violence--from one murder to none, eight rapes to five, 18 robberies to 12 and 56 felony assaults to 43. Thefts were also off sharply, from 583 to 462.

Indeed, Simi Valley has led the county in reducing crime during the last seven years, and has seen its crime cut by more than half.

The story is much the same in Thousand Oaks, which ranked second to Simi Valley last year among the nation’s large cities. Its crime has dropped again this year by 180 offenses, to 944. And that came despite an uptick in felony assaults that Kemp said was caused mostly by two wild parties that ended in the arrests of 15 juveniles and young adults.

“So almost 25% of those assaults came out of just two parties,” she said. “About half the assaults were domestic violence. So when you look at the size of our community, 63 aggravated assaults is not a large number.”

In absolute numbers, the county’s largest city, Oxnard, made the most impressive showing. It cut 390 crimes from its total, and whittled violent offenses by 47. That is on top of seven straight years of declining crime that saw Oxnard’s serious-crime rate fall from 68 crimes per 1,000 residents to 40.

“Crime is substantially lower today than it’s been for decades,” Chief Art Lopez said in a news release. “The figures are remarkable.”

In Camarillo, a 12% drop was paced by solid reductions in both violent and property offenses. Robberies fell from 21 to nine, and thefts from 455 to 377. Home burglaries, however, ticked up.

Moorpark, routinely the local city with the lowest crime rate, saw total offenses jump 10% to 220 with increases in both violent and property offenses. There were no murders or rapes, but felony assaults were up from 10 to 24.

Because it is so tiny, Ojai’s crime increase appears high at 18% overall and 86% for violent offenses. But in absolute numbers the increase overall was up from 107 to 126. And violent crime increased from seven crimes to 13.