Crime Orange County

The first moments of 1991 began with a fierce gang brawl in Placentia that left Jack Cisneros, a father of five, shot dead. Three days later, in an unrelated incident, Santa Ana gang members showered a truck with bullets, killing 17-year-old Elizabeth Miranda as she chatted with friends and family. Both victims were innocent bystanders. The new year promises more bloodshed and innocent victims at the hands of Orange County gang members, who left a record body count in 1990.

Five peep show businesses in Garden Grove have until noon today to remove the doors from their video viewing booths, under a preliminary injunction issued by Superior Court Judge John C. Woolley. At the request of the city, Woolley granted the injunction Dec. 28 to enforce the city's peep show regulation ordinance on the Adult Bookstore, the Bijou, A-Z Bookstore, Garden of Eden Bookstore and Hip Pocket Bookstore, all located along Garden Grove Boulevard.

There are gangs in Orange County that have been around much longer, but police say none in recent years has developed a bigger reputation for criminal activity than Santa Ana's 6th Street gang. "Homicide, rape, assault, you name it," Santa Ana police Lt. Robert Helton said Wednesday. "They have been terrorizing people around here for a long time. . . . They are not much better than animals."

Linda Tay and Kathy Woods have never met, but they have an awful lot in common. Both immigrated to the United States as young newlyweds, Tay from Taiwan and Woods from Great Britain. Each chose a quiet Orange County community for its strong schools and safe streets: Tay's rambling house is in the hills of Orange Park Acres, Woods' condo is perched on the San Clemente coast 30 miles away. Last New Year's, each woman had a popular young son making good grades and looking ahead to college.

For the first time since 1987, state officials on Thursday reported that violent crime in Orange County's major cities decreased last year, bucking a longtime and continuing statewide trend. Big-city police chiefs across the county attributed the decrease to various factors, ranging from increased law enforcement efforts aimed at arresting career criminals, to better cooperation from residents.

In an analysis of newly released FBI statistics showing a dramatic drop in area crime, six Orange County cities were among 20 of the largest nationwide reporting the lowest overall crime rates. Property crime in the county's large cities dropped at more than three times the national rate of decline, which was about 4%, and continued a trend toward lower crime rates. Orange County's 6% decline in violent crimes also outpaced the national average of 5%.

More than ever, Orange County citizens are worried about a rising tide of violence and the safety of their neighborhoods, but the general public might not be any more at risk from crime than it was five or 10 years ago. Two standard measures of criminal activity, one used by the FBI and another by the state Department of Justice, indicate that the number of serious felony crimes committed in Orange County per 100,000 residents has actually dropped since the early 1980s.

Continuing a trend that has cheered police and mayhem-weary residents for several years, crime in Orange County dropped for the first six months of 1998, according to figures from the state attorney general's office. But in what officials there call an aberration, assaults in Huntington Beach--which long has prided itself on being one of the safest big cities in the country--rose precipitously. State Atty. Gen.

Although most Orange County campuses are safe, scores of public schools here report crime rates far worse than the state averages for alcohol and drug use, thefts, vandalism and battery, a Times analysis has found. At Tuffree Middle School in Placentia, for example, students were busted for drug and alcohol offenses 17 times last year--a rate five times the state average.

In the past 14 days, Orange County youths have been arrested in three vicious crimes: the apparent gay bashing of a man beaten beyond recognition in Laguna Beach, the bludgeoning death of an honors student in Buena Park and the mugging of an elderly Garden Grove woman whose arm and shoulder were broken by two teen-agers who stole 50 cents to play video games. Authorities say these brutal incidents are symptomatic of a steady rise in ever more violent crimes being committed by juveniles.