Crime California

--At Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Robbin Brandley, 23, was murdered on Jan. 18, 1986, while walking to her car in a dimly lit parking lot after ushering at a school concert. --At San Diego State University, there have been eight rapes and attempted rapes in the last two years, the most on any California State University campus. In 1985, Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity was banned for five years as a result of a rape during a party at the house.

It's not even 11 a.m., and Jordan Whaley's dashboard radio has been crackling all morning with crimes newly committed: crops pilfered, gas siphoned, copper wire stolen. This latest call is one of the strangest so far. Thieves have taken 54 brass valves from the irrigation system on Ryan Hopper's orange farm. They've also stolen scrap metal from his tool shed and siphoned hundreds of gallons of fuel from a diesel tank on his field. The crime infuriates Hopper, costing him time and money just before the orange harvest.

California's three-strikes law, the nation's toughest such statute, has had little deterrent effect on hardened criminals, or influence on the state's drop in crime, a study by University of California researchers released Monday shows. The study by UC Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring comes as the legislative analyst's office issued an update showing that almost 50,000 felons have been sent to prison under the statute's terms since it took effect five years ago.

Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that they will seek the death penalty against three men who allegedly kidnapped five Los Angeles-area residents for ransom, killed them and dumped their bodies in a reservoir near Yosemite National Park.

Serious crime in Orange County plunged for the seventh straight year in 1998, falling 13% to the lowest rate since at least the 1970s, according to state Department of Justice figures released Tuesday. Nowhere were the declines more noticeable than in homicides. During the crime wave of the early 1990s, Orange County recorded nearly 200 murders a year. But last year, the number dipped below 100 for the first time in more than a decade, hitting 85, compared with 102 homicides in 1997.

Amid rising public concern about crime, the number of reported criminal offenses in the state and Orange County fell last year, state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren said Tuesday. The exception was homicide, which rose 5% statewide and by a whopping 34.5% in Santa Ana. Elsewhere in the county, the number of homicides remained constant. For most of Orange County, crime decreased between 1992 and 1993, from 2.2% in Orange to 13.1% in Irvine.

The watchdog Little Hoover Commission has urged Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature to make crime prevention their top strategy in seeking to turn the tide of violent juvenile crime in California. In a 158-page report issued Tuesday at the conclusion of a seven-month study, the bipartisan commission recommended the creation of an agency that would consolidate the state's juvenile crime-fighting programs and increase the coordination at the state and local levels.

Asian-American leaders on Thursday charged that state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp's report on organized crime foments racism by exaggerating Asian involvement in gang activity. A coalition of Asian-American groups from across the state joined to rebuke the attorney general for last week's report, which identified Asian gangs as a major organized crime movement on the rise.

An Assembly committee Wednesday overwhelmingly approved legislation requiring all colleges in California to disclose campus crime statistics to prospective students and their parents. With parents of several slain college students standing by, the Assembly Ways and Means Committee sent the proposal by Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) to the Assembly floor on an 18-1 vote. The bill already has passed the Senate.

Amid rising public concern about crime, the number of reported criminal offenses in California nevertheless fell last year, state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren said Tuesday. The only exception to the decline was homicide, which rose 5% in 1993, Lungren said, citing preliminary statistics that included an estimated two-thirds of all reported crimes.

While sexual assault is largely considered the "silent crime" because more than 70% of rapes are never reported to police, high-profile cases such as Kobe Bryant's have brought the issue of sexual violence to the forefront.

A study released today concludes that California's controversial three-strikes law has contributed significantly to the aging of the state's prison population--a trend that could have significant implications for crime rates and the costs of the justice system. The report by the Sentencing Project of Washington, D.C., a liberal think tank, states that in the first five years after the 1994 law took effect, the median age of male inmates rose from 29 to 31.

Gun makers cannot be held responsible when their products are used to commit crimes, the California Supreme Court decided Monday. Ruling in the case of a 1993 shooting rampage at a San Francisco office tower, the court overturned an appellate decision that would have opened the way for victims of gun violence to sue manufacturers for the harm their products caused.

While crime rose across the state for the first time in eight years, most of Orange County's largest cities bucked the trend during 2000 and recorded modest declines in violent and property crimes. Murders showed the largest drop: There were 37 in Orange County last year, compared to 62 in 1999. Property crimes--including burglaries and vehicle thefts--dropped 3% while total violent crime declined by 5.7%. The findings, in a report from state Atty. Gen.

For the first time in eight years, crime has increased in the state's most populous cities and counties, according to a state attorney general's report. Serious crime increased 3.5% in 2000 compared to 1999 in cities with populations of more than 100,000, said Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, who released the figures Tuesday. The report includes statistics for six major categories: homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft.

Crime increased slightly in California's largest cities in the first half of 2000, with Los Angeles skewing statistics upward with its 9.7% jump in crime, the state's top prosecutor said Monday. If Los Angeles were removed from the list, the state's crime rate would have dropped slightly compared with the first half of 1999, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said. Overall, however, crime increased 1.3% in the 77 California cities with populations of at least 100,000, Lockyer said.

Violent crime in California rose 8.4% last year, state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren said Tuesday in a speech calling for increased penalties for offenders. The preliminary statistics cited by Lungren, which compared the first 10 months of 1991 to the same period the year before, suggest an alarming increase in criminal activity after a decade of general decline. Crimes of all sorts increased by 5.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren announced Thursday that major crime in California dropped 8.2% during the first six months of 1997, compared to the same period last year, with some noticeable downward spikes, such as a 60% decline in homicides in Long Beach. "Crime in California continues to drop dramatically in virtually every category, building on the already historic declines we've seen in the last three years," Lungren told reporters in Long Beach.

Crime in the United States fell for a record eighth straight year in 1999, with California experiencing an even sharper drop than the rest of the country, the FBI reported Sunday. The downward trend held true for virtually all types of crime, in all regions of the country, in cities, suburbs and rural areas alike, according to federal statisticians.