City Homicides, at Mid-Year, Pushing Record

It was near midnight Thursday when Francisco Marquez Vela climbed out of a station wagon with three other men at Allen Park in Southeast San Diego. The group was laughing and talking.

Seconds later, one of Marquez Vela’s companions pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun and shot him three times. While Marquez Vela lay on the ground, the killer stood over him and fired again. The slayer and his friends fled.

Marquez Vela, in his mid-20s and from Mexico, died at 12:43 a.m. Friday at Mercy Hospital.

He became the city’s 76th homicide of the year, a list that grew late Friday afternoon when two people died in Clairemont in a apparent murder-suicide and a body was found buried beneath a cement slab in City Heights.

If the pace of killings during the first six months continues the rest of the year, 1991 will set a record for homicides in San Diego. The city’s all-time record is 144, which was set in 1988, said Kimberly Glenn, who compiles and analyzes crime statistics for the Police Department. Glenn cautioned that it’s “too early for projections” about the city’s homicide total for the year.

To the police who investigate the slayings, it’s clear 1991 has been busy. Said Lt. Dan Berglund, who heads the department’s homicide investigations detail, “This is definitely higher than anything we’ve had before.”

During the first six months of last year, for example, there were 66 homicides, Berglund said. As of Friday night, the total this year had reached 78.

“And we’re not even through the month yet,” Berglund said. “We still have a couple more days to go.”

Police say the city’s growing population is the main cause for the increase.

“The city is growing . . . and with that increase, you’re going to have more crime,” Berglund said.

He added, “We have a lot of transients that come from the border, seeking a better way of life, who become victims of other people who prey on them. We also have transients from other parts of the country who come because of the climate.”

There’s no doubt that the city has grown rapidly. In 1985, San Diego had about 979,000 residents, said Debbie Parise, a researcher for San Diego Assn. of Governments, a planning organization for the region. The city had 96 homicides that year, said Glenn, the police statistician.

By last year, the city’s population had increased to a little more than 1.1 million. And, although the homicide rate in 1990 did not surpass the 1988 record, the 135 killings in 1990 were symptoms of the problems of a large city, Glenn said.

San Diego is now the sixth-largest city in the U.S.

Added Glenn, “There’s no question that San Diego is increasingly becoming a big city in terms of big-city crime. . . . That doesn’t mean that there is a direct and exact relationship between population and homicide, but nevertheless, the trend is increasing along with population.”

But San Diego is not as bad off as other large U.S. cities.

According to police statistics, San Diego is at the bottom of the 10 largest cities in homicides per 1,000 residents. And, to some extent, there is a season to the mayhem, though not as pronounced as in other cities, particularly those in the East.

Glenn said that, in general, crime goes up in summer, although homicides in San Diego don’t fit into a strong seasonal trend.

“We don’t have these summers here that make people turn around and kill their neighbors,” she said.

San Diego does have some seasonal crime trends--there are more robberies during the holiday season, for example--”but they are not as strong as in other parts of the country where they have strong (climatic) seasons,” Glenn said.

Still, Berglund expects homicides in San Diego to rise this summer, as they have in previous summers.

“The homicides haven’t slowed down,” he said, “and I’m assuming it’s only going to increase.”

San Diego Homocides ‘80: 103 ‘91*: 152 *Projected Source: San Diego Police Department