EDITORIAL

Costa Mesa got a shot of good news at the end of last month when the

FBI released its crime reports for the nation’s biggest cities.

Those numbers show the city ranked 30th among the 209 cities with more

than a 100,000 population.

The report -- the preliminary 2000 Uniform Crime Report -- also showed

that most crimes were down compared with 1999. Violent crimes were down

16%, while they stayed about the same for the country as a whole.

Property crimes were off 3%. The only increase was in motor vehicle

thefts, which rose 21%.

These numbers are a testimony to the hard work of the Costa Mesa

Police Department, the members of which work 24 hours a day, 365 days a

year to protect and serve the city. The numbers also reflect the

close-knit, protective community residents help create across the city.

Compared with a similar city near the coast, such as Oceanside, it is

clear how safe Costa Mesa is. While in Costa Mesa there were fewer than

3,500 crimes in 2000, Oceanside had almost 6,000. Those figures are

particularly higher for the most heinous of crimes, murder and forcible

rape.

The numbers are not without some cause for concern, however. While

Costa Mesa rises to the top across the country, it floats near the bottom

in Orange County, ranking seventh of eight big cities here. Only

Fullerton ranked lower. Across the Santa Ana River in Huntington Beach,

there were about 4,500 crimes -- but with about 75% more residents.

The Police Department, led by Chief David Snowden, believe the reason

for that is that Costa Mesa is more thorough in reporting crimes than

those cities. But that doesn’t mean the police shouldn’t redouble their

efforts to bring the numbers down. And in a city where residents are so

concerned with their community, the police should be able to find ample

aid to make Costa Mesa an even safer city.

The answers won’t be easy, and they shouldn’t be. The easy answers

have been tossed around too often in recent months -- at City Council

meetings, in letters to the editor and at community gatherings.

Get rid of charities and the people committing the crimes will leave

the city, one of those answers goes.

Not true. What such conclusions fail to address -- other than not

clearly proving that people who have to make use of charities also commit

crimes -- is that, without the lifeline charities provide, it only makes

sense that crime would rise as people are forced by desperate times to

take desperate measures.

Get rid of low-income housing and the people most likely to commit

crimes will be forced to leave, goes another.

Aside from the ethical problems of this answer -- pricing people out

of their homes is not only bordering on immoral, but laws regarding

affordable housing make it illegal -- there also is no logical basis for

that conclusion.

Indeed, Newport Beach residents will tell you that being in an

affluent community certainly doesn’t protect you from being a target of

those criminals from outside the city limits.

And Costa Mesa is conveniently located next to the San Diego Freeway,

making it easily accessible to would-be criminals from not only Orange

County, but Los Angeles as well.

In other words, the easy answers aren’t really answers at all, just

the same old destructive finger pointing that we hear from some groups.

And to make Costa Mesa safer, these non-answers should never be a part

of the solution.