Thousand Oaks Passes Simi in ‘Safe City’ Rankings : Crime: FBI report on large urban areas rates the two east county communities in second and third place nationally.

A college town in suburban Buffalo and local rival Thousand Oaks pushed Simi Valley from the top of the nation’s list of safe large cities last year, according to FBI statistics released Sunday.

Boasting a white-collar affluence similar to the two eastern Ventura County communities, Amherst Town, N. Y., became the most crime-free urban area in the United States with a population of 100,000 or more, FBI crime and population figures show.

“It’s nice to have bragging rights,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said. “But there’s always going to be statistical variations. This year, we zag and they zig. Next year, they zag and we zig.”

Thousand Oaks, which ranked first from 1989 to 1991 and was third last year, moved up to second. Simi Valley was third and the Los Angeles County suburb of Santa Clarita was fifth.

California cities, in fact, grabbed eight of the top 10 places nationwide after two suburban Detroit communities that often place in the top 10 filed incomparable data for the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Reports.

The rankings are based on a ratio of city population to crime reported in eight categories--murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, auto theft and arson.

When only the violent crimes are compared, Amherst Town remained first and Simi Valley third. Irvine was second and Thousand Oaks fell to fifth. California held five of the 10 top positions.

Sunnyvale, a San Francisco Peninsula community, was fourth in both rankings. Two of the nation’s 12 largest cities, San Jose and Honolulu, were also among the safest of the 188 cities compared.

Oxnard, the only other city in Ventura County included in the large-city comparisons, ranked 23rd overall, with a rate of about 54 crimes per 1,000 residents. That compares to 26.8 per 1,000 for Thousand Oaks and 29.9 per 1,000 for Simi Valley.

Although edged by Amherst Town for national bragging rights, Thousand Oaks eclipsed Simi Valley by cutting serious crime by about 10%. Simi Valley offenses surged about 9%.

However, violent crime fell in both jurisdictions as Ventura County boosted its status as the safest urban county in the West.

“The key to the friendly competition we have with Thousand Oaks,” Stratton said, “is that we are both in place to be the safest cities.”

Thousand Oaks officials said the new crime figures reflect not only the high income and education of most residents, but also a fervent anti-crime attitude.

“A lot of people moved out here from the Los Angeles area, and they’re willing to invest their time to make sure that what happened there doesn’t happen here,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, who serves as the Thousand Oaks police chief.

Over the last 18 months, Kemp said, vigilance has led to the near-doubling of Neighborhood Watch groups; the creation of new citizen patrols, where residents take to the streets at night to spot intruders, and the graduation of five 25-person classes from a Citizen Academy, where civilians are educated in police procedures.

Another 23 graduates of a Volunteers in Policing program will soon begin patrols in uniforms and marked cars to write tickets and give police extra sets of eyes and ears.

Residents have rallied because of recent concerns about the city’s first gang-related slaying and a 1994 after-school brawl that left two Westlake High School students with gunshot wounds.

Last fall, when a pregnant Newbury Park woman was wounded as gang members mistakenly riddled her house with gunfire, police expected perhaps 50 people at a community meeting.

“We ended up with 220 and moved it out of the room to a basketball court,” Kemp said.

That type of civilian interest helped cut Thousand Oaks crime by 342 offenses to 2,934 last year, Kemp said. The biggest drop was in burglary, down 24%. Even serious assaults, which increased with gang activity, dropped by 44 to 207.

Both Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley also joined a countywide task force aimed at suppressing gang violence through special units and persistent raids.

The agencies mobilize as gang violence flares, moving quickly to raid the homes of gang members on probation. Search warrants are not required in such cases.

While crime in Thousand Oaks declined, it surged in Simi Valley because of steep increases in burglaries, thefts and auto thefts.

Simi Valley officials cite an old problem--thieves from Los Angeles County.

Last summer, the city’s car theft rate jumped 79% from the previous summer. Often, detectives said, the thieves would drive into town, split up and drive out in stolen vehicles.

Conversely, when Simi Valley’s crime plummeted in 1993, officials said one key reason was that several San Fernando Valley theft rings had been busted.

Yet, Simi Valley’s 3,153 crime total last year is high only when compared to the city’s nationwide low the year before--and is well below its 3,547 offenses of 1992.

Officials also emphasize that the crime rate uptick involved property crimes, rather than crimes against people.

In violent crime categories, Simi Valley still had an edge on Thousand Oaks, 218 incidents to 286.

“One of the problems with these statistics is that they treat every crime the same,” Stratton said. “We’re proud that in crimes against people, we’re very, very low.”

Simi Valley had one murder, nine rapes, 39 robberies and 169 serious assaults last year.

Only the planned community of Irvine in Orange County and Amherst Town, the home of two New York colleges, had less violence.

Amherst’s statistics were so low--serious assaults dropping from 124 to 31 in one year--that state and federal officials checked them out, a township official said.

The problem was that until this year, township figures had been changed incorrectly by a state law enforcement agency to count minor assaults as aggravated assaults in reports to the FBI, Amherst Police Capt. Frank Olesko said.

“Ours was the accurate count,” he said. “[Investigators] were out here yesterday to tell us we were right.”

Overall, Ventura County had a rate of 37.3 crimes per 1,000 residents last year, the lowest in more than two decades.

Other low crime rates in California included Sunnyvale’s 31.8 crimes per 1,000, Santa Clarita’s 34.3, Irvine’s 39.0, Glendale’s 41.0 and Huntington Beach’s 43.7.

Sunnyvale’s figures were particularly noteworthy, declining 24% in one year because of a nearly one-third drop in thefts.

San Jose by far had the lowest crime rate of any city in the United States with a population of more than 200,000--45.4 crimes per 1,000.

Although the nation’s second-largest city, Los Angeles had a rate of 80.2 crimes per 1,000 residents--far lower than many other large cities in California.

Fresno had the highest crime rate among the state’s large cities, with 122.7 per 1,000 residents. It was followed by San Bernardino, 121.4 per 1,000; Berkeley, 110.3; Oakland, 107.1; Stockton, 105.6, and Sacramento, 103.7.

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America’s 10 Safest Cities

Lowest crime rates for cities with populations of 100,000 or more.

Crimes per City Population 1,000 residents* Amherst Town, N.Y. 107,238 26.2 Thousand Oaks 109,386 26.8 Simi Valley 105,614 29.9 Sunnyvale 120,492 31.8 Santa Clarita 120,735 34.3 Irvine 121,460 39.0 Glendale 180,753 41.0 Huntington Beach 188,265 43.7 San Jose 815,235 45.4 Green Bay, Wis. 102,248 46.7

* Statistics reflect eight categories of violent and property crime.

Source: FBI