Week in Review : Ventura County : Population Rising, but Crime Rate Falls

At first glance, the statistics appeared paradoxical indeed: Although Ventura County’s population boomed in the 1980s, its crime rate plummeted.

During the 1980s, the county’s population jumped by 26%, as about 140,000 new residents poured in. But during the same period, its crime rate plunged 22%, according to police statistics released last week.

For the average Ventura County resident, the numbers reflect what many already know: the county is a pretty safe place to live. But for police officials, they reflect a combination of tougher treatment of criminals, successful crime-prevention tactics and demographic luck.

Countywide, about 550 fewer crimes were reported in 1989 than in 1980, police reported. And the reduction in reported crime was felt in nearly every part of the county, regardless of poverty or wealth.

For example, Oxnard, the county’s largest city and one of its poorest, had more than 1,000 fewer crimes at the end of the 1980s than at the beginning. Its crime rate, substantially higher than the state average 10 years ago, is now substantially lower.

According to figures prepared by local police agencies for the FBI, murders, rapes, robberies, burglaries and arsons were all down sharply last year from a decade before, making Ventura the most crime-free urban county in the West.

Law enforcement authorities attributed the situation in part to the absence in Ventura County of large inner-city slums, where crime is usually high. They also credited Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury’s policy against plea bargaining, even on minor offenses, and stiff sentencing by local judges, who rate statistically as California’s toughest.

Oxnard Police Chief Robert P. Owens said the declining crime rate also is attributable to a drop in the number of youths in the crime-prone ages of 12 to 20. School officials said there were nearly the same number of junior- and senior-high school students in the county in 1981 as in 1989, about 49,000.

Owens added that burglaries in the city are at a 12-year low because of a city ordinance requiring dead bolt locks and solid doors on homes. He said robberies dropped from 540 in 1980 to 320 last year, in part because police circulated in local farm-labor camps, telling workers it was unwise to carry large wads of cash on pay days because of the chances of getting robbed.

The two biggest classes of newcomers to the county were immigrant Latinos and affluent commuters. Authorities said both groups tend to adapt quickly to the county’s “old-fashioned, small town values.”

“The urban syndrome is something they’ve moved away from,” said county Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg.