Community Support Helps Drive Port Hueneme Crime Down by 13%

Fernando Estrella has worked the streets of Port Hueneme for 32 years, but the small-town police chief says he has never felt such support from his community.

“We’ve always enjoyed a good working relationship,” Estrella said, “but after the events of 9/11 we’ve worked together even closer.”

The community’s support for the 24-officer Police Department shows up not only in public meetings, he said, but also when patrol officers cruise the tree-lined neighborhoods of the seaside town.

“You drive around and people want to talk with you now,” said Estrella, chief in the 22,000-resident city for two years. “We interact more positively than we ever had before.”

That is how Estrella explains a 13% drop in crime in Port Hueneme last year.

“It’s a mirror of the people who work here and the people who live in this community,” he said.

Reported crime continued a decade of decline, during which offenses have been cut in half, thanks to large reductions of theft, auto theft and robbery.

The city’s crime rate now stands at 24 per 1,000 residents compared with 49 in 1991, at its peak. As figured by the FBI, a city’s crime rate is the ratio of population to eight categories of crime--murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, theft, auto theft and arson.

Port Hueneme’s rate is in the middle of the pack among Ventura County’s 10 cities, which collectively rank among the safest areas in the nation for jurisdictions of their size. Port Hueneme’s decrease in 2001 was second only to Fillmore’s 18% decline.

Credit is due in part to the city that surrounds Port Hueneme on three sides, Estrella said. Oxnard’s anti-gang unit helps Port Hueneme keep the disgruntled youth of both cities under control.

“We work very closely with Oxnard in identifying and keeping tabs on the people [who] choose this particular lifestyle,” the chief said. “That’s been a real plus.”

Burglars, however, worked Port Hueneme hard last year, as home and business break-ins increased from 91 to 126.

“In one area, a group of juveniles moved in and committed 10 to 15 burglaries before we took them into custody,” Estrella said.

After leaving juvenile hall recently, several of the burglars moved out of the city, he said.

Even as crime has leveled off countywide in the last two years, Port Hueneme’s totals have continued to drop. Police counted 579 offenses in 1999 and 486 in 2001.