Crime Drops for 10th Year

Ventura County’s crime rate fell for the 10th straight year in 2001, defying state and national trends and buttressing the affluent county’s rank as the safest urban area in the West.

Reported offenses dropped 3% last year, including steep declines in homicide, rape and felony assault, as the county’s crime rate plummeted to half its peak in 1991, a Times analysis shows.

The rate of criminal offenses in the county, one of California’s richest, dipped to 22 per 1,000 residents.

By comparison, the California crime rate was 37 offenses per 1,000 residents, and the U.S. rate was 41, in the most recent reports. A new survey of crime in the state’s large cities showed about a 6% increase in 2001, while crime in the nation leveled off after a decade of decline.

“In Ventura County, we tend to pay a lot of attention to crimes at the lower end of the spectrum, misdemeanors and vandalism, that are ignored in other jurisdictions,” Sheriff Bob Brooks said.

“We prosecute those crimes and that keeps them from becoming larger ones.”

The county also benefits from an unusually strong economy, involved citizens who regularly supplement police patrols and special enforcement squads that quash youth gangs and attack emerging problems.

Total offenses in the county’s 10 cities and its unincorporated areas dropped by 540 last year to 16,994, compared with more than 30,000 a decade ago, when the county had far fewer residents.

Felony violence was off 6.8% in 2001 compared with the year before, and property crime was down 2.6%.

The numbers reflect crime in eight categories reported annually to the FBI--homicide, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, theft, auto theft and arson.

Crime dropped in seven local cities but increased in 13% in Santa Paula and 5.5% in Camarillo, partly because of surges in violence, and 2.8% in Simi Valley.

Declines were most dramatic in the county’s smallest cities--Fillmore, Port Hueneme and Ojai, where offenses were off from 12% to 18%.

The white-collar commuter enclaves of the east county were far safer than the cities of the agricultural west, which are more reflective of California as a whole.

As usual, 32,000-resident Moorpark was the county’s safest city and among the safest in the state, with a crime rate of fewer than 10 offenses per 1,000 residents.

“Moorpark is a very, very involved community with crime prevention,” said Brooks, whose department polices that upscale city. “We have a high level of citizen volunteers. And, like many of the residents in this county, they came here to improve the quality of life. They came here with high expectations.”

Nearly as safe were Moorpark’s east county neighbors, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, which regularly rank nationally as the two safest cities with at least 100,000 residents.

Crime was up slightly in Simi Valley, because of a string of high-profile homicides.

“It was a tough year,” Police Chief Randy Adams said. “But these weren’t random acts of violence. They were individual acts of terrorism directed at someone they knew.”

Crime was down slightly in Thousand Oaks because of a reduction in burglaries.

“We continue to be safer, and that’s driven by the involvement of people who are not afraid to call the police,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Keith Parks, who serves as the Thousand Oaks police chief.

In actual numbers, Oxnard, the county’s largest city, had the biggest decrease, with 400 fewer offenses reported in 2001 than the year before. The 7% drop accounted for three-fourths of the county’s crime loss.

Yet blue-collar Oxnard still had 31% of the county’s crime and 41% of its violence, although its 178,000 residents make up just 23% of the local population.

“This is a large city,” said Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez, “so we do have some active gangs and some characteristics of larger cities. But when you look at cities our size, our figures really aren’t too shabby.”

Even before last year’s reductions, Oxnard ranked as the fifth safest of 43 U.S. cities with populations between 150,000 and 200,000, according to a Police Department analysis.

While crime keeps dropping in Oxnard--its rate is off 56% from a decade ago--robberies increased to 393 in 2001 from 375 the year before.

Victims are often farm workers who do not have adequate identification to set up bank accounts and often carry large amounts of cash on paydays. Lopez said he met last week with the Mexican consul in Oxnard to try to create an ID card for Mexican nationals that would be accepted by local banks.

“The opportunity is there for street thugs to take advantage of some of the less fortunate,” Lopez said. “People are not as well educated as we’d like to see them, and they make good targets. So we’re trying to harden the target.”

Ventura reported 3,370 offenses, compared with 5,300 in Oxnard, but had the most crimes per resident in the county.

Ventura’s crime rate of 32.9 offenses per 1,000 residents is slightly higher than Oxnard’s and Santa Paula’s. But when violence alone is considered, Ventura’s rate is far lower than its two closest neighbors.

The Ventura rate of violence last year was 2.7 crimes per 1,000 residents, compared with 4.6 in Oxnard and 4.3 in Santa Paula.

Total crime in Ventura was almost the same as in 2000, down just three offenses. But violence fell 18% in 2001, as felony assaults dropped from 230 to 160.

“We’ve had a very successful gang violence suppression program,” Ventura Police Lt. John Garner said.

Santa Paula--a farming community of about 29,000 residents--had the biggest increase in crime. Offenses were up nearly 13%, with increases in six of eight criminal categories, especially robbery and theft.

Police Chief Robert Gonzales said crime is closely tied to the number of drug addicts and career criminals on the streets.

“It all depends on who’s out and who’s in [prison],” he said.

Santa Paula recently announced receipt of a $1-million federal grant to fight crime and build a base of community activities in one crime-plagued portion of the city.

“Hopefully, this grant will create an opportunity for education and training for those who are involved in crime and drugs,” Gonzales said.