Large Cities Report Drop in Violent Crime

Violent crime plummeted in Ventura County’s large cities for the first half of 2001, but total criminal offenses ticked up overall in three of four cities with at least 100,000 residents.

Reported violence was down most in Ventura and Thousand Oaks, about 14% and 9%, respectively. It also dropped in Oxnard and Simi Valley, according to the state attorney general’s midyear report.

Only Thousand Oaks, however, reported an overall decline in the eight categories of violent and property crimes--murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, theft, vehicle theft and arson--that the FBI uses as a standard to detect trends.

“When we look at the long-term trends, this is an area that is becoming safer,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Keith Parks, who serves as Thousand Oaks’ police chief.

Ventura County’s reduction in violent crime reflects a trend throughout California, where acts of violence dropped 1.5% for the first six months of 2001 compared with the same period the previous year. By contrast, property offenses rose 2.9% statewide.

Among local cities, Thousand Oaks recorded a 12% overall reduction from 1,032 offenses to 907, due mostly to sharp declines in rape, robbery and theft.

The drop in rapes and robberies reflects a return to normal patterns after steep increases last year, Parks said. In 2000, a flurry of acquaintance rapes boosted the total, he said. Likewise, a serial bank robber drove up the robbery count.

“Last year the bank robberies were happening here; this year they’re happening in Ventura,” Parks said, referring to five recent bank robberies by one suspect in the west county.

Ventura recorded the greatest reduction in violent offenses despite a sharp increase in forcible rapes. That is because a crackdown on gang violence cut felony assaults about 31%, from 117 to 81, Police Sgt. Brock Avery said.

“We can’t go out and prevent rapes,” he said. “But we’ve continued to staff our gang unit and focus on the type of assaults we find gang members usually do. We can prevent those crimes. We know who the players are, and we can exercise probation searches and keep them in check.”

Ventura’s 4% overall increase in crime comes from a 93-incident jump in thefts that results from a change in how the Police Department reports some minor offenses, officials said.

“We started reporting some things we weren’t capturing before,” Avery said.

But a 60% jump in auto thefts--from 73 to 117--also hurt, he said. Investigators recovered many of the stolen vehicles in Oxnard, abandoned after apparent joy rides over a two-week period, he said.

“It wasn’t a chop shop type of thing; it was malicious mischief,” Avery said. “We never really solved it, but we got the cars back.”

Oxnard saw its overall crime rise slightly from 2,726 to 2,790 offenses but had a 7% decline in violence as felony assaults fell 22%.

“It’s a continuation of a long-term trend that started back in 1992,” police spokesman David Keith said. “If you look at it on a per capita basis, crime has dropped in half.”

But a jump in robberies from 187 to 216 caught the attention of Oxnard police, he said.

“We have a task force looking at that right now,” Keith said. “These are not robberies of businesses. The victims tend to be people coming out of bars late at night.”

In Simi Valley, the nation’s safest large city based on FBI crime data, police reported a 4% drop in violence but an overall increase of 2.8%.

Most of the increase came from a surge in auto thefts from 57 to 87. At the same time, robberies dropped from 28 to 12.

The figures do not count the slaying last month of three members of a Simi Valley family by an acquaintance who invaded their home and opened fire before fleeing and killing himself.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Ventura County Crime, Large Cities, January-June, 2000/2001

*--*

City/Year Murder Rape Robbery Felony Burglary Assault OXNARD (population 170,358) 2000 3 33 187 227 679 2001 3 21 216 178 673

SIMI VALLEY (population 111,351) 2000 1 6 28 39 195 2001 1 5 12 53 175

THOUSAND OAKS (population 117,005) 2000 2 12 24 70 169 2001 1 4 15 78 159

VENTURA (population 100,916) 2000 2 8 44 117 319 2001 2 18 46 81 273

*--*

Ventura County Crime, Large Cities, January-June, 2000/2001 (continued)

*--*

City/Year Theft Auto Arson Total Crime Theft

OXNARD (population 170,358) 2000 1,575 454 22 2,726 2001 1,678 449 21 2,790

SIMI VALLEY (population 111,351) 2000 487 57 9 822 2001 507 87 5 845

THOUSAND OAKS (population 117,005) 2000 673 71 11 1,032 2001 575 67 8 907

VENTURA (population 100,916) 2000 938 73 13 1,514 2001 1,031 117 7 1,575

*--*

Source: California Department of Justice