Serious Crime in County Plunges 14% in 1999

Ventura County crime, already at a 30-year low, plummeted again last year. But some in law enforcement think the trend can’t last much longer.

Reported crime fell for the eighth straight year in 1999, reaching levels not seen since 1969, as the county experienced a huge drop in thefts and burglaries and a double-digit tumble in criminal violence.

Reported serious offenses dropped to 17,292 last year, down 14% from 1998 and 43% lower than the all-time high nine years ago, a Times analysis of police data shows.

That means there were nearly 13,000 fewer crimes--including 1,400 fewer homicides, rapes, robberies and felony assaults--than in 1991, although 75,000 more people live here today.

The reduction produced a crime rate of 23 offenses per 1,000 residents, less than half of the county’s record high of 53.3.

The decline in crime was most dramatic in Fillmore, Santa Paula, Ventura and Port Hueneme. Only Moorpark--the county’s safest city--experienced an increase, and that was only slight. Crime continued to fall in the east county suburbs of Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, as they extended their rivalry for the title of safest large city in America. The continued decline raised questions about how low Ventura County’s crime rate can go. Demographics have already shifted. The number of young men in their most crime-prone years has been increasing since the mid-1990s.

“There obviously is a point at which crime can’t go any lower,” Sheriff Bob Brooks said. “You look at the crime-prone ages of 14 to 26 and those are increasing. Our crime trends haven’t reflected that yet. But it’s like stretching a rubber band. It can’t continue to stretch.”

For now, though, Ventura County--one of California’s richest--can count the blessings of its affluence, good economy and involved citizens, authorities said.

“We’ve been doing some things we didn’t do before in terms of forming partnerships with the community,” Brooks said.

Throughout the county, police agencies now rely on storefront stations to help stem lawlessness and promote friendly relations. Citizen patrols--a boon over the last decade--continue to grow. And tough two- and three-strike sentences are putting repeat criminals behind bars.

Indeed, police officials say their agencies are more effective because they increasingly target suspected criminals with long records and put them behind bars for a long time.

Police say such tactics led to a 12% drop in the four categories of violent crime reported to the FBI and a 14.3% reduction in property crime--burglaries, thefts, auto thefts and arson.

Fillmore’s stunning 43% drop in reported crime--by far the county’s largest last year--is a good example.

There, burglaries fell by two-thirds and thefts were off by one-third after a ring of young thugs was either run out of town or arrested, Brooks said.

That was accomplished by reaching out to Fillmore’s Latino immigrants--many of whom come to this country with a distrust for police--by hiring Spanish-speaking officers and recruiting immigrants to a new Community Law Enforcement Academy modeled after the sheriff’s success in Thousand Oaks.

“In Fillmore, we had success because we had a small number of people committing a large number of crimes, and patrol officers and investigators focused their attention on the right place. And they had help from the community,” Brooks said.

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In neighboring Santa Paula, the news was almost as good. After a 38% surge in violence in 1998, robberies and felony assaults fell 27% last year. Burglaries were also off sharply.

Police Chief Bob Gonzales said his understaffed department can’t take all the credit.

“Things happen in society,” he said. “The economy is good, and there is a direct correlation to the three-strikes law.”

But his officers were also effective by concentrating on a handful of criminals and taking them off the streets. Those included hardened gang members and drug users who committed burglaries to support their habits, he said. Police also worked with schools officials to catch truants, cutting daytime burglaries.

“Our guys just identify people and go after them,” Gonzales said. “If you have one individual who commits a large number of crimes--and we do--you just target him. But we still do it with smoke and mirrors because we have so few officers.”

Santa Paula’s department had 27 sworn officers when he joined the force in 1972 and just 29 today, Gonzales said.

Ventura had the greatest numerical reduction, lopping off 843 offenses--mostly thefts--for a 22% overall reduction. But violent crime was only off by three, from 331 to 328, and felony assaults jumped by 48.

Officials attributed Ventura’s dramatic drop to a strong community policing program that includes four storefronts, an active preventive role with six officers on school campuses and an effective gang-suppression program.

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And in Port Hueneme, where total crime dropped 18%, Chief Stephen Campbell said 1999 was a very good year, despite a spate of sexual assaults at one apartment complex that increased the number of rapes citywide from four to 13.

“I can’t take credit for it being down, but it’s a good sign,” he said. “You really like to take credit, but it jumps back up and then you have to take credit for that too.”

In Thousand Oaks, offenses fell by 225 in 1999, reducing the city’s crime rate to just 15.7 crimes per 1,000 residents. That could help Thousand Oaks retain its ranking as the second safest city of 100,000 in the nation, after Simi Valley.

“It’s really remarkable,” said Brooks, whose agency functions as the city police department. “We just see our number of volunteers there going up and our community policing program increasing.”

He said deputies have been extremely effective in Thousand Oaks by targeting neighborhoods with higher crime rates. “It seems that if we focus our resources that way, we make a much bigger difference.”

Yet, east county bragging rights still belong to Simi Valley, where a 7.4% drop in offenses produced a crime rate of 15.6 per 1,000 residents, just one-tenth of a point better than Thousand Oaks.

While trailing smaller Moorpark overall, Simi Valley also had the lowest violent crime rate in the county--with just 1.1 violent offenses for each 1,000 residents.

Acting Chief Mark Layhew said success comes from an active crime prevention program, strong community support and aggressive county prosecutors.

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Years ago, the city never had the kind of formal community involvement it has today, he said. Nor did it have a gang task force.

“Now, when we have gang-related activity, we deploy our resources to address that particular situation,” Layhew said.

The only category in which Simi Valley had a surge in crime was arson, where reports went from 16 to 52.

“We had a rash of dumpster fires and probably two or three suspects,” he said. One suspect, who suffers from mental illness, was arrested after allegedly igniting bushes, boat covers and cardboard boxes under motor homes, he said.

Oxnard, the county’s largest and historically most crime-prone city, had a 7.4% drop in crime, bringing its crime rate to 37.4 offenses per 1,000 residents, compared to a rate of 68.3 in 1992. Significantly, the city’s violent crime has fallen as fast as crime overall.

“That’s what we’re really the proudest of,” Chief Art Lopez said. “We’ve got only four murders and for a city the size of Oxnard, with 160,000 people, that’s phenomenal.”

Lopez, a deputy chief of police in Los Angeles until 16 months ago, credits two special units--a gang squad and a federal-local violent crime task force--with holding violent crime at bay.

But he said more than 1,000 members of citizen patrols and active Neighborhood Watch groups are most responsible for Oxnard’s progress.

“We have a great relationship with our community,” he said.