Support Your Local Police

In the “maybe too good to last” category comes the welcome news this month that crime in Orange County’s largest cities has continued to decline for the fifth consecutive year. Though the numbers unfortunately can turn around in a hurry, they do reflect effective police work in the county.

The latest FBI survey found that crime in the cities of Anaheim, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Orange and Santa Ana dropped by 20% for the first six months of 1996 compared with the first six months of 1995.

As expected, there were sharp differences among the cities in the various categories of crime. In Irvine, the number of reported rapes increased from 7 to 10, a rise of 43%, while the number of robberies declined from 35 to 29, a drop of 17%. In Anaheim, the number of murders plunged from 16 to 3, a dramatic decrease of 81%.

The causes of crime are many and are not fully understood. Childhood abuse, lack of education and values, and drug addiction all can play a part. Demographers believe the larger the population of young adults, the greater the crime rate. That is why the expectation for several years has been that the crime rates across the country will increase; the population of those in the late teens and early 20s is going up.

That is a concern in Orange County as well. The Juvenile Division of the Orange County district attorney’s office reported last year that in 1995 aggravated assaults by young people in the county, a category including attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, increased by 81% over the 1994 figures. There was also a 32% increase in charges of robbery. The one ray of sunlight was a drop in the number of juveniles charged with murder.

One reason for the heartening FBI statistics on the overall declining crime rate in the largest cities is innovative police techniques like community policing.

That program is expensive but worth the cost. It puts more police officers in the community, on foot, bicycle or in squad cars, getting to know residents and enlisting support within a neighborhood. Some Orange County communities have made use of federal funds to help beef up the police forces and increase the presence in the community.

Anti-gang programs have an impact as well, especially the TARGET programs that include prosecutors, police and probation officers to crack down on gang crime. Neighborhood watch programs also can assist law enforcement. No matter how police do their jobs or what crimes they are investigating, they need support from the community. Without it, the good news on declining crime statistics is unlikely to last long.