Crime Rate Drops in Ventura County : Safety: Statistics show a dip that is attributed partly to police efforts to crack down on gang violence and drug users.

By DARYL KELLEY

April 9, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Ventura County crime fell for the third straight year in 1994, reaching levels not seen for more than two decades and boosting the county’s status as the safest urban area in the West.

Final statistics show that serious crime was off 1.5% countywide last year thanks to sharp drops in Fillmore, Santa Paula, Camarillo and Thousand Oaks--and to Oxnard’s continued success with citizen patrols.

The county’s 26,433 crimes in 1994 were about 3,800 fewer than reported just three years before, when offenses reached an all-time high.

“In the three years since we drew a line in the sand and had to face up to our problems, we’ve found some things that work,” said Sheriff Larry Carpenter, whose agency patrols five local cities and the county’s unincorporated areas. “We’re going in the right direction.”

The recent crime-fighting strategies of most local police agencies have been similar--arrest more drug users to reduce theft, suppress gang violence through special units and persistent raids, and rally ordinary citizens to come to the defense of their own neighborhoods.

Police officials say the advent of aggressive, new citizen patrols--in Oxnard, Santa Paula, Fillmore and Thousand Oaks--has made a difference.

“They’re our eyes and ears,” said Oxnard Chief Harold Hurtt, who saw spotlight wielding citizen patrols spread from one neighborhood to 26 in two years as crime dropped 18%. “The patrols have served as a determined force against criminal activity.”

Police in Oxnard, Ventura and Fillmore have opened police storefronts to attack crime pockets head-on. The Sheriff’s Department also uses a mobile storefront mounted on a trailer in the west county, and a second will be deployed soon in Thousand Oaks.

But perhaps the greatest change of the last three years has been the police agencies’ decision to fight youth gangs collectively as a countywide task force, sharing intelligence and moving at a moment’s notice to raid gang members’ homes.

“We’re determined that what happened in L.A. County with gangs is not going to happen in Ventura County,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, who acts as Thousand Oaks’ police chief. “When gang activity gets intense, our gang searches get intense.”

Crime’s three-year downward spiral is welcome relief to a county that was reeling in 1992, following a 17% surge over the two previous years. While the crime increase of those frightening years touched every local community--regardless of poverty or wealth--the trend of the last three has been one of gain and moderation, police said.

Without exception, every local city has a lower crime rate today than it did in 1991.

But some officials note that those gains have come almost exclusively in crime categories that have little to do with personal safety, such as burglary and theft.

And, they say, Ventura County is still a more violent place today than it was just a few years ago. For example, the number of murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults was up 1% countywide last year and 23% higher than in 1989.

“That’s what I call the meanness factor,” Carpenter said. “In what used to be a simple car theft, drivers are now pulled out of their cars and often they’re kicked and stomped. It’s not a simple car theft anymore.”

Still, taken as a whole, the new crime statistics are encouraging, police said. The county registered 26,433 crimes in 1994, down 409 from the previous year in the eight categories reported to the FBI for its annual report.

Homicides, rapes and robberies were all down sharply, but serious assaults were up slightly because of what police say is a dramatic increase in reports of domestic violence. And there was a small decrease in each category of property crime--burglary, theft, auto theft and arson.

The new statistics show that Moorpark, the county’s richest city, maintained its position as the most crime-free community.

But Oxnard, traditionally the county’s most dangerous city, has been replaced by Port Hueneme, the small community Oxnard borders on three sides. In fact, after registering an 18% crime decrease the last two years, Oxnard has also been replaced by Ventura as the local city with the highest overall crime rate.

Moorpark had a rate of only 19.5 crimes per 1,000 residents last year, while Ventura’s was nearly three times that.

The Moorpark and Ventura totals reflect the difference in crime rates between the new affluent communities of the suburban east county and the older cities of Santa Clara Valley and Oxnard Plain.

The east county, which has about 38% of the county’s population, had just 27% of its crime and only 17% of its violent offenses last year.

The west county’s crime rate was 44 offenses per 1,000 residents, compared to 26 per 1,000 in the east. Both areas fared well compared to the most recent statewide rate of about 65 per 1,000.

Of the three east county cities, crime was down 8.6% in Thousand Oaks, but rose 2.3% in Moorpark and 9.5% in Simi Valley.

Kemp said Thousand Oaks survived a flurry of gang violence in late 1993 and early 1994 and has seen such activity drop away.

“They were going after each other with baseball bats and drive-by shootings, and we responded very strongly to that (with raids). They have been relatively quiet since last summer.”

Narcotics arrests were also up 83% in Thousand Oaks, which took petty thieves off the street so they could not steal to support their habits, Kemp said. Deputies were given special training in how to detect a drug user when that person is stopped for a traffic violation or questioned about other offenses, she said.

In Simi Valley, Acting Chief Richard Wright said that last year’s crime totals appear high only when compared with those of 1993, when the city ranked as the safest of its size in the nation.

For example, burglaries increased by 42 in Simi Valley last year, to 653, but that compares to 760 burglaries in 1992.

“We look at the general trend, which is down,” Wright said. “In 1975 we had 1,249 burglaries, and half the population we do now. So you see what I mean.”

Wright said his force was also hampered by a new, balky computer system that did not help identify pockets of crime as they developed. The computer is working well now, he said.

In the west county, crime was down 4.5% in Oxnard, 9.5% in Camarillo, 11.7% in Santa Paula and 20% in Fillmore. It rose 1% in Ojai, 5% in Ventura and 26.7% in Port Hueneme, where violence surged by more than one-third.

Police Chief John Hopkins said he dreaded release of Port Hueneme’s 1994 statistics.

“I was afraid we’d see a large increase,” he said. “We were so low the year before.”

Burglaries and thefts were up sharply, but the largest increase was in violent crime.

As with several cities that showed increases in aggravated assaults last year, Hopkins said Port Hueneme’s total was up mostly because of a near doubling of domestic violence cases.

For Oxnard, the county’s largest city and among its poorest, 1994 was one for good news. A two-year crime decline resulted in 1,764 fewer offenses than in 1992.

Chief Hurtt credited citizen patrols, two new police storefronts and a bigger budget with the success. The Oxnard department now has 170 officers, up 22 from three years ago.

Camarillo had the lowest crime rate of all the west county cities, having used citizen patrols to continue to cut thefts and burglaries that skyrocketed in 1990 and 1991.