Killings Way Up, Coroner Reports

The number of homicides in Orange County’s largest cities during the first half of the year was underreported to the state attorney general’s office, the county’s deputy coroner asserted Friday.

As a result, Kurt Murine said, a state report released this week indicated an increase in homicides of 12.5% compared with the same period in 2001, when the actual increase was 70.8%.

“It’s important to understand that the increase in violent crime, specifically homicide, in Orange County is being underreported and its significance underappreciated,” Murine said.

Murine said the biggest discrepancy was from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which reported one homicide from January to June. He said the department recorded 10 homicides during that period.

Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said he would look into the conflicting numbers. “According to our records we had just one homicide,” he said. “I don’t know where the coroner’s office got its statistics.”

It was unclear which Sheriff’s Department numbers the state counted. Murine said all sheriff’s patrol areas should be counted. But the state report appears to have counted only homicides in unincorporated areas, not the many small cities sheriff’s deputies also patrol.

The coroner’s office is a division of the Sheriff’s Department, overseen by Sheriff Michael S. Carona.

Five additional killings went unreported by the cities of Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Garden Grove and Santa Ana, Murine said. That resulted in the state attorney general’s crime report listing only 27 homicides in Orange County’s largest cities instead of 41, he said.

“I can’t begin to point fingers as to why these homicides aren’t being reported,” Murine said. “Some cases can take months and months to be resolved and reviewed. It’s possible that some of the [law enforcement agencies involved] didn’t have the full benefit of closed investigations.