Crime Takes Another Fall : But Issue Is Still a Big Source of Fear for Public

This year has brought another drop in crime in Orange County, a development that is always welcome. The reasons are numerous, with some police officials giving much of the credit to a better economy. But a nagging problem remains the fear of crime. Even though crime rates have been in a steady decline for seven years, the perception that this is a safer place to live has trailed the reality.

In past years, violent crimes decreased dramatically. But for the first six months of this year, it was burglaries and vehicle thefts--nonviolent offenses, that led the drop, according to the state Department of Justice.

Overall, the state’s figures showed a 9% decrease in the county’s biggest cities and in areas patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department. Violent crime was down 3%, with property crimes down 18%. Last year during the same period, violent crime went down 11% and property crimes 5%. One reason for the drop is that with fewer violent offenses to worry about, police can give more of their attention to house burglaries, stolen cars and the like.

A Huntington Beach police lieutenant said more people are aware of the need to lock doors and windows and more have alarm systems on cars and houses. Educating people in how to make themselves and their property safer is a valuable part of police work. In South County, most of which is under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department, dozens of chaplains have been trained by the department in how to tell parishioners ways to reduce crime and improve their neighborhoods. The department says it is now expanding the program across the county.

In the last six years, total crimes in Orange County have dropped by more than 30%. Homicides have fallen by half, an especially welcome trend. Academic researchers believe one reason is demographics. The number of young men in their teens and early 20s has dropped, and that’s the group that commits the majority of crimes. Those kinds of changes are cyclical, of course, so that as the number of youths in the age group with a higher propensity to commit crimes increases, the county could be in for rough times. That would be exacerbated if an economic downturn like the one in the early 1990s occurred.

But for now, police smartly are taking advantage of the chance to concentrate on solving lesser crimes and past cases they were not able to crack. Huntington Beach is considering having detectives review unsolved crimes, a practice the Sheriff’s Department already has launched. It’s a good idea. Crime victims never close the book so long as those who preyed upon them are at large; police shouldn’t give up either.

But the fear of crime remains strong. In South County, 19% of respondents to UC Irvine’s Orange County Annual Survey this year put crime at the top of their list of most important problems. In North County, the total was 31%.

One reason for the disparity appears to be the ethnic breakdown of the county. Nearly half the Latinos listed crime as the No. 1 problem, and most of the county’s Latinos live in the north, in Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove.

Those who conducted the survey said some of the concern about crime stems from media putting too much emphasis on the issue. That’s especially true of television, with its numerous reports on all sorts of crime in news reports and in made-for-TV movies.

Changing people’s perceptions to conform more closely to reality has been a problem for police and civic leaders for years now. Residents who have benefited from energetic community policing programs may be better attuned to the reality.

Community policing has been adopted in a number of Orange County cities and has proved its worth. Rather than waiting in a station house to respond to pleas for help, police aggressively patrol neighborhoods, becoming familiar faces and gaining residents’ trust. Developing rapport between police and neighborhood groups builds relationships that can deter crime and help solve it once it occurs.