Officials Welcome Crime Report Review

Responding to disclosures that city police record fewer crimes than citizens report, top Ventura officials said Monday that they welcome a review by the state Department of Justice and would change crime-reporting procedures if auditors find a problem.

The Times reported Sunday that Ventura police have failed to record hundreds of minor property crimes each year since 1995, apparently violating FBI reporting guidelines and skewing statistics used to gauge crime-fighting success.

“I think we need to bring the [police] chief in and talk about this,” said Councilman Ray Di Guilio. “And we may need to have [auditors] come in to make sure our reporting is consistent with the rest of the county. We need to compare apples with apples.”

Local cities often cite crime statistics to polish their images in recruiting new businesses. Indeed, Ventura County routinely ranks as the safest urban area in the West, with Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks as the nation’s safest cities. Ventura reported the highest crime rate in the county in 1994.

In July 1995, Ventura police stopped immediately writing crime reports or routinely dispatching officers when citizens called in to report petty thefts and minor burglaries. Instead, the department asked those crime victims to come to the station to fill out reports, or complete and return reports that police would mail to them.

But many people never bothered to officially report the crimes. And that is part of the reason that Ventura’s reported crime dropped almost in half from 1994 to 1999.