Report: Newport Beach and Costa Mesa safe

Deepa Bharath

NEWPORT-MESA -- Newport Beach and Costa Mesa have been listed as two

of the safest cities in the nation for 2000.

The eighth annual America’s Safest and Most Dangerous Cities report

released by Morgan Quitno, a publishing company in Lawrence, Kan., ranked

Newport Beach the 25th and Costa Mesa the 58th safest cities of the 327

cities included on the list.

Mission Viejo topped the Dec. 21 list among Orange County cities with

a No. 3 ranking, while Irvine and Huntington Beach followed at 17 and 21,

respectively. The city of Orange came in at 41. Costa Mesa was ranked 73

last year.

Newport Beach police officials are happy with their city’s high

ranking, Sgt. Steve Shulman said.

“I think we have a safe community because of the nature of its

citizens,” he said.

Shulman said 2001 seemed to be a good year but does not know how it is

going to look on paper.

“We’ve caught a lot of crooks this year,” he said, “seized a large

amount of narcotics, caught burglars and car thieves, recovered quite a

bit of property. I would say it’s been a successful year.”

Newport Beach was not featured in last year’s report that listed 1999

numbers because its population was still less than 75,000, said Scott

Morgan, president of Morgan Quitno.

Costa Mesa police officials are also pleased with the rankings but

anticipate the crime rate will go up in 2001, Lt. Dale Birney said.

“Up to this point, we have experienced an increase in crime for the

year 2001,” he said.

A recent undercover operation devised to battle street robbers was in

response to such increases in specific crimes, Birney said.

Morgan said the report analyzes statistics rather than crime-related

issues.

“It’s pure numbers,” he said. “It doesn’t take into account, for

example, the demographics of a city. That’s why we get a lot of criticism

from professors and criminologists.”

But numbers are all they aim to present, he said. The company gets its

information from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports released annually.

The methodology involves calculation of the city and metropolitan area

crime rates per 100,000 population under six basic crime categories --

murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle

theft. In Newport Beach’s case, because there are fewer than 100,000

residents, the report used 75,000 instead. The FBI report includes a

seventh category -- thefts or larceny -- but the Morgan Quitno report

ignores that category, Morgan said.

The numbers are then plugged into a formula that measures how a

particular city or metropolitan area compares with the national average

for a given crime category. The outcome of the equation is then

multiplied by a weight assigned to each of the six crime categories.

For this year’s award, each of the six crimes was given equal weight,

Morgan said. These weighted numbers then were added together for a city

or metropolitan area’s final score.

Nationally, Amherst, N.Y., earned the safest city honor in the report,

while Detroit fell victim to being the most dangerous.

* Deepa Bharath covers public safety and courts. She may be reached at

(949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at o7 deepa.bharath@latimes.comf7 ..