These Numbers Lie

How did the Ventura Police Department cut its crime rate nearly in half between 1994 and 1999?

In part, by changing its reporting procedures. Fewer of the burglaries and thefts that actually occur have been making it into the statistics.

That doesn’t offer much comfort to the victims of those phantom crimes--or to the taxpayers who provide the department’s budget.

In 1994 Ventura had the highest crime rate of any of Ventura County’s 10 cities. In July 1995, it adopted a new policy: Ventura police stopped immediately writing crime reports when people called to complain about petty thefts and minor burglaries. Instead, the department asked crime victims to come to the station to fill out a report or complete a report police mailed to them, and return it.

An internal audit disclosed that only about 50% to 60% of such forms are returned in burglary cases, mostly thefts out of garages, and 53% to 70% are returned in theft cases.

Not surprisingly, Ventura now ranks well below Oxnard and Santa Paula, with a rate of offenses near the county average. Of that drop, 86% has been in burglary and theft, the two categories for which the city changed its guidelines.

No other Ventura County city uses such a procedure to track crime reports--and for good reason. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook directs that a crime report be written each time a police agency receives a crime complaint. The Ventura Police Department policy apparently violates this guideline, leading to artificially rosy statistics.

At the same time this dubious practice is coming to light, more credible statistics reveal that crime rates across most of Ventura County are lower than they have been in 30 years, declining in 1999 for the eighth straight year.

The county has experienced a huge drop in thefts and burglaries and a less dramatic dip in less criminal violence. Reported serious offenses dropped to 17,292 last year, down 14% from 1998 and more than one-third lower than the all-time high nine years ago, according to a Times analysis. That means there were 13,000 fewer crimes--including 1,400 fewer homicides, rapes, robberies and felony assaults--in the county last year than in 1991, although 75,000 more people live here today.

That is certainly good news for Ventura County residents. It does, however, call attention to the enormous portion of the public budget that the county and its cities choose to spend on law enforcement while other needs go unmet.

Are taxpayers getting their money’s worth? The skewed bookkeeping practiced by the Ventura Police Department makes it a fair question to ask.