Crime Falls for 7th Consecutive Year in 1998

Not since Ventura County was still an agricultural outpost, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and hippies danced at Woodstock was the crime rate as low as it was in 1998.

Crime fell for the seventh straight year, reaching levels not recorded since 1969 and adding luster to the county’s reputation as the safest urban area in the West.

Reported serious offenses dropped to 20,131 last year, down 9.2% from 1997 and one-third lower than the all-time high eight years ago, a Times analysis shows.

That means there were 10,000 fewer crimes--including 1,100 fewer homicides, rapes, robberies and felony assaults--in the county last year than in 1991, though 62,000 more people live here today.

The reduction produced a crime rate of 27.3 offenses per 1,000 residents, about half of the county’s record high rate of 53.3.

Sheriff Bob Brooks said the low crime rate is a product of an involved citizenry.

“People move to Ventura County because they want a safe place to raise their families,” said Brooks, whose department patrols nearly half the county. “They tend to identify more with their communities and take a more active role in protecting them.”

But he worried the low crime numbers could make people less vigilant.

“I’m afraid,” Brooks said, “that this will make people apathetic about the real threat of crime in our community. If you’re a crime victim, you don’t care about a falling crime rate.”

Authorities also cautioned against reading too much into the lower crime statistics. They believe that underlying all the good news is a simple demographic shift: People are generally older today, and older people are less prone to lawlessness.

But the county also benefits from an abundance of cell-phone packing, flashlight-toting citizen patrols, and a trend toward getting police out of their patrol cars and into the community.

Further, some broad--and welcome--societal changes are helping, officials say. Youth gangs are no longer as cool or glorified the way they were a decade ago. And tough two- and three-strike sentences are putting repeat criminals behind bars for a longer time.

Throughout the year, police continued to press strategies that helped staunch an early 1990s crime surge. They suppressed gangs through special units and targeted drug users to reduce theft.

Beefed-up police budgets have also put more officers on the streets, officials said.

For instance, a multimillion-dollar annual budget boost from Proposition 172 has added 50 patrol officers to the Sheriff’s Department. The five cities in the sheriff’s jurisdiction--Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Moorpark, Ojai and Fillmore--have hired another 25 to 30 officers, Brooks said.

East County Cities Rated Among Safest

In Oxnard, the county’s largest and historically most crime-prone city, the force has grown to 197 uniformed officers, up 49 just since 1992.

As a result of all these factors, Ventura County’s violent crime fell 6.4% last year, and is now 31% lower than in 1991. Property crime was off 9.6%, and is nearly 34% lower than eight years ago.

There were reductions in all eight categories the FBI lists in its annual crime report--homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, auto theft and arson.

Broken down by jurisdiction, criminal offenses declined last year in nearly every part of the county, regardless of race or income.

The white-collar suburbs of the east county remained among the nation’s safest cities for their size. Moorpark was the safest city in the county, Santa Paula the most prone to crime.

The most remarkable crime reductions were 22% in Moorpark, 20% in Port Hueneme, 17% in Simi Valley and 16% in Oxnard.

Indeed, Simi Valley has seen the deepest cuts in crime over the past seven years. Remarkably, crime is off 48% in that commuter city, down from a peak of 3,442 to 1,804.

“Our crime rate is the lowest in the history of this department,” Simi Valley Chief Randy Adams said. The department was formed in 1971.

“It’s a . . . trend, with a lot of things working for us,” Adams said. “No. 1, we have a growing community partnership.”

That has translated into a cadre of 15 to 20 office volunteers who free officers for patrol, he said. Another 300 volunteers from the city’s emergency preparedness team also help out as citizen extensions of his department, Adams said.

“We try to create an environment where if you’re going to engage in criminal activity, you will know you need to go somewhere else,” Adams said.

Significant Crime Drop Posted in Oxnard

The same can be said for the county as a whole. Overall, Ventura County’s crime rate is about half that of the state, and well below the nation as a whole.

Except for Fillmore, all local cities now have far less crime than in the early 1990s. Beyond Simi Valley’s 48% decline, the most precipitous seven-year drops were 39% in Thousand Oaks, 35% in Oxnard, 34% in Moorpark, 31% in Ventura and 30% in Ojai.

In absolute numbers, Oxnard led the way. That city recorded 1,252 fewer serious crimes last year, cutting robberies from 518 to 393 and lopping 799 thefts off its 1997 total.

That means Oxnard accounted for more than 60% of the 2,050-crime reduction countywide last year.

Just five years ago, Oxnard, which has 21% of the county’s population, accounted for 47% of the area’s violent crime. That figure has fallen to 39%.

“These are incredible figures, and we’re very proud of them,” Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez said.

Lopez, a deputy police chief in Los Angeles until four months ago, said he has been amazed at how involved Oxnard residents are in crime prevention. The city has organized neighborhood councils in all 42 of its neighborhoods, up from just one six years ago. These groups field more than 1,000 volunteers to serve as the eyes and ears of police.

“They’ve got set watch hours in the evening,” Lopez said. “And they’ll go out and drive the streets to make sure there is no crime. Their job is not to confront the suspects, but to call us on cell phones and we’ll dispatch the units.”

Oxnard, using a multiyear federal grant, has also been effective in attacking crime at its root level--placing officers in high schools as role models and to steer potential criminals away from serious trouble, Lopez said.

Rising Rates in Fillmore, Santa Paula

For Moorpark, last year’s 22% crime reduction was more of the same. Regularly the county’s safest city, Moorpark is also its richest. And that helps when it comes to crime, Brooks said.

“Even more new developments with high-income families are coming into town,” he said. “And the more the shift in that direction, the lower your crime rate tends to go.”

Nor did it hurt that the Sheriff’s Department opened its first station in Moorpark in 1998, or that recruitment of citizen volunteers kicked into high gear last year, Brooks said.

Amid all the good news, the crime rates for Fillmore and Santa Paula rose.

And those two Santa Clara Valley communities may be a sign of things to come, because the proportion of young men in crime-prone years--ages 13 to 25--will steadily increase over the next decade.

Indeed, demographers say the trend has already begun and that local, state and national crime rates have defied expectations in continuing to decline.

Walt Adair, police chief in Santa Paula, said he wished that was the case in his city. Santa Paula had 38% more violent crime last year than in 1997.

“We’re getting an increase again in young men in their crime-prone years,” Adair said. “There’s a new crop involved in gangs or violent activities.”

In response, police have stepped up efforts to prevent the types of violent offenses that can be foreseen, such as domestic violence, Adair said. “We are focusing on crimes against the family and against children.”

But Santa Paula police have had to make tough choices on enforcement, he said, since its number of sworn officers--29--has remained the same since 1972.

Despite a 7.1% overall crime increase last year, Santa Paula still had 30% less crime than at its peak in 1992, Adair said.

Fillmore is the only city in the county that has more crime and a higher crime rate now than in 1991.

A community of just 13,000 residents, Fillmore had a crime rate of 32.8 per 1,000 last year, contrasted with 31.5 eight years ago.

Fillmore may be a victim of its own success, Brooks said.

With downtown reconstruction after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Fillmore is increasingly a quaint destination point for weekend tourists. And more people means more crime, Brooks said., “The only thing I can attribute it to, the only red flag,” Brooks said, “is that Fillmore is attracting a lot more people than it did before.”

Statistics support that position. All 50 of the city’s additional crimes last year were burglaries, and visitors usually add to burglary totals as well, Brooks said.

Youth Gang Influence May Be Lessening

Fillmore has an above-average rate of violence. Brooks said most of that is domestic abuse, though youth gangs are a problem too.

Yet gangs may be less of a problem today than they used to be, officials said.

For the past six years, police agencies have fought youth gangs separately and collectively as a countywide task force, sharing intelligence and moving at a moment’s notice to raid gang members’ homes.

The county’s four largest cities--Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Ventura and Oxnard--are spending more time and money to attack gang violence.

Simi Valley targets gangs with a special community task force and a five-officer enforcement team, Adams said.

Last year Thousand Oaks shrank violent crime to its lowest level in 13 years through the use of a full-time, eight-officer gang unit to make 112 gang arrests, said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, who serves as police chief. That contrasts with 160 arrests three years ago.

The number of felony assaults, a common reflection of gang activity, fell from 134 to 103 in Thousand Oaks last year.

“We are still practicing an aggressive, zero-tolerance policy out here. But to be honest, the problem is less now because we’ve put the gang leaders in jail,” Kemp said. “And kids aren’t dumb. They see these guys they thought were cool going to jail.”

A partnership between the Conejo Valley school district and the sheriff’s gang unit has also helped, she said.

“Gangs still have allure to at-risk kids who need that identification,” she said. “But this has helped with communication, and some kids are listening.”

In Ventura, overall crime was about the same in 1998 as the previous year. But police believe a crackdown on gangs helped produce the county’s largest reduction in felony assaults--from 232 in 1997 to 165 last year.

“We increased the size of our gang unit from four to six, and added two resource officers to the high schools,” Assistant Chief Steve Bowman said. “All of that was to reduce gang violence. For the last several years our No. 1 priority has been gangs and youth violence.”

Ventura County Crime Report

Crime per 1,000 Residents, 1998

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Violent Property Total Crime Crime Crime Moorpark 1.2 12.3 13.5 Simi Valley 1.5 15. 17.0 Thousand Oaks 1.3 16.5 17.8 Camarillo 1.8 19.5 21.3 County Overall 3.3 24.0 27.3 Ojai 2.2 27.4 29.6 Port Hueneme 3.9 27.9 31.8 Fillmore 4.0 28.8 32.8 Ventura 3.2 34.7 37.9 Oxnard 6.0 35.1 41.1 Santa Paula 8.3 33.9 42.2

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County Crime Trends, 1992-98

CRIME OVERALL

* Context: County crime fell to the lowest levels in three decades, with the county maintaining its status as the safest urban area in the western United States.

Crimes per 1,000 residents

‘92: 42.7

‘96: 27.3

VIOLENT CRIME

* Context: Port Hueneme and Thousand Oaks had drops of 30% and 20%, respectively, while Santa Paula had a 38% increase. Oxnard’s share was 39% of the total.

Crimes per 1,000 residents

‘92: 5.5

‘96: ‘3.3

PROPERTY CRIME

* Context: Moorpark and Simi Valley led with drops of 22% and 17%, respectively, while Fillmore had a 15% increase.

Crimes per 1,000 residents

‘92: 37.2

‘96: 24.0

Ventura County Crime Statistics

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City Year Homicide Rape Robbery Felony Assault Burglary Camarillo 1997 1 7 23 80 278 1998 1 9 36 60 218 Fillmore 1997 0 1 11 37 101 1998 0 2 14 36 155 Moorpark 1997 4 4 10 30 119 1998 0 2 12 22 116 Ojai 1997 0 3 2 15 60 1998 0 2 2 14 50 Oxnard 1997 5 61 518 470 1,238 1998 8 47 393 488 1,096 Port 1997 7 7 36 82 212 Hueneme 1998 4 4 38 48 179 Santa 1997 2 3 44 113 326 Paula 1998 5 4 69 145 481 Simi 1997 5 15 48 115 503 Valley 1998 2 32 40 113 417 Thousand 1997 1 19 34 134 417 Oaks 1998 0 15 32 103 451 Ventura 1997 4 32 112 232 972 1998 5 37 123 165 809 Countywide 1997 25 183 862 1,513 4,673 1998 28 165 776 1,449 4,396

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City Year Theft Auto Theft Arson Total /1,000 People Camarillo 1997 809 85 9 1,292 22.0 1998 857 90 10 1,281 21.3 Fillmore 1997 210 12 5 377 29.2 1998 193 25 3 428 32.8 Moorpark 1997306 28 10 507 17.8 1998 322 34 4 396 13.5 Ojai 1997 163 7 1 251 30.1 1998 154 18 1 241 29.6 Oxnard 1997 4,370 956 28 7,646 50.0 1998 3,571 777 14 6,394 41.1 Port 1997 482 79 2 903 39.4 Hueneme 1998 390 59 1 717 31.8 Santa 1997 492 68 11 1,059 39.9 Paula 1998 341 83 6 1,134 42.2 Simi 1997 1,257 204 25 2,172 20.9 Valley 1998 1,055 156 16 1,804 17.0 Thousand 1997 1,430 207 27 2,269 20.0 Oaks 1998 1,293 154 15 2,063 17.8 Ventura 1997 2,145 298 33 3,861 38.4 1998 2,407 304 27 3,877 37.9 Countywide 1997 12,663 2,111 151 22,181 30.7 199811,356 1,838 123 20,131 27.3

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Sources: Sheriff’s Department; police departments in Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Santa Paula, Simi Valley and Ventura.