Crime Statistics

The citizens of Los Angeles are outraged at the ever-mounting crime statistics resulting from gang violence. This message has been conveyed to the police and district attorney, who have vigorously pursued and prosecuted gang members. Gang crime took on a whole different meaning for me two years ago, when I became a part-time volunteer chaplain at Central Juvenile Hall.

Huntington Beach, known for its surfing, its beaches and its laid-back lifestyle, was named "America's Safest City" Thursday by a Kansas-based publisher using FBI crime statistics. Two other California cities placed at the top of the list--Glendale was rated second and Fremont, in the San Francisco Bay Area, was ranked third. Santa Ana, the only other Orange County city included in the rankings, placed 29th. Atlanta was rated as the least safe of the 93 cities surveyed.

"I said to myself, 'Turn your head. He's going to shoot you, you know.' And then I thought, 'No.' I wanted to see if it's going to come. I wanted to see my life flash before me, like they say happens before you die or whatever." In the space of a gunshot, she became a statistic. And a puzzling one at that.

The decline in violent crime in Los Angeles has been among this region's most gratifying and encouraging trends in recent years. But some have worried that the decline must inevitably level off and give way to stasis. Happily, year-end data from the Los Angeles Police Department suggest there is still progress to be made. Sociologists and criminologists once doubted that police could do much about violent crime. Violence, the theory went, was attributable to any number of social phenomena ?

At a time when local domestic violence complaints are soaring at record rates, state crime statistics show that the Orange County district attorney's office has the worst record among prosecutors in the state's six most-populous counties for vigorously pursuing spousal abuse cases. Over the past three years for which state figures are available, the office of Dist. Atty. Michael R.

For Thousand Oaks, one of the safest large cities in the nation, authorities say Jason Wines was a one-person crime spree. Wines, 25, who lived in bushes next to a Thousand Oaks freeway, was recently sentenced to a year in Ventura County Jail after pleading guilty to eight felony counts of grand theft, vehicle burglary and receiving stolen property. Investigators said Wines acknowledged committing more than 60 property crimes. He was charged with 37.

Santa Ana again posted Orange County's highest stolen car rate in 1993, despite a second straight year of decreased auto theft activity, according to insurance industry statistics released Thursday. The city had 1,360 stolen vehicles per 100,000 population, compared to 1,324 and 1,302 in Buena Park and Anaheim, according to data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau. It was the third consecutive year that Santa Ana posted the county's highest auto theft rate, the data showed.

Simi Valley ranked as the safest big city in the nation last year with Thousand Oaks coming in a close second, according to FBI statistics released Sunday. For the sixth time in nine years, cities in Ventura County have topped the list for the most crime-free cities over 100,000 in the United States. Thousand Oaks, which ranked first in 1995, was closely followed by Amherst Town, N.Y.--a college community in suburban Buffalo.

A violent city became even more violent during 1990, as murder and robbery in Los Angeles increased at double-digit rates, according to statistics released Monday by Police Chief Daryl F. Gates. The number of rapes, which actually had dropped in 1989, climbed again, slightly, in 1990. Aggravated assaults increased by about 3%. Perhaps the most optimistic news from the summary of crime reports between Jan. 1, 1990, and Dec.

For the fifth straight year, this small, crowded city leads Orange County with the highest crime rate. With a population of about 30,700, Stanton had the highest overall crime rate of any city in the county, according to newly released figures for 1991, the latest year for which numbers are available. Someone was murdered, raped, robbed or assaulted in Stanton at least once a day, on average, last year.