Ojai Shows Violent Crime Decline

Anti-gang unit credited with drop in youth assaults

By Daryl Kelley
Serious crime in Ojai rose slightly last year, but felony violence dropped to its lowest level since at least 1990, because efforts to reduce youth-gang assaults were successful, police said this week.
New statistics show that while overall crime inched upward because of petty theft, serious violent offenses were off sharply thanks to a drop in felony assaults, a category of crime often influenced by gang activity.A new Sheriff’s Department anti-gang unit began operations last spring in western Ventura County, including the Ojai Valley, and authorities credit that with contributing to a sharp reduction in assaults. Also, a spate of gang-related violence in 2006 prompted the conviction of a dozen youths, taking them off the street at least temporarily.
“It’s exceptionally low, and it’s definitely related to less youth-gang activity,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Bruce Norris, who functions as Ojai’s police chief. “You could see it was down by what the deputies are doing here in the city.”
The most serious gang-related violence locally last year was a drive-by shooting on Drown Street in February, when a shooter from out of town wounded an east Ojai resident. There was another drive-by shooting early this month, when a 17-year-old high school student was shot in the leg, but not seriously wounded, at the corner of Ojai Avenue and Fox Street.
“The last three major incidents we’ve had were not the result of (Ojai) gang members assaulting people: they were the victims of the assaults,” Norris said. “It was somebody else’s aggression.”
Overall, there were 263 major crimes in Ojai last year, up six offenses from 2006 and the highest level since 1995, the Sheriff’s Department reported this week.
All of that increase was the result of a jump in thefts.
Still, home and business burglaries were off.
And criminal violence plummeted by almost half, from 19 in 2006 during a spate of gang assaults to just 10 last year. The city experienced no murders, two rapes and three robberies. One rape was by a longtime live-in boyfriend and the other is still under investigation because of inconsistent stories by the victim.
The robberies were by an ex-employee of Sea Fresh restaurant, a man who demanded cash in Libbey Park then shot the victim with a BB gun, and a heist of a branch of Rabobank.
Serious assaults, often a marker of gang activity, fell from 17 to five.
The biggest spike was in petty theft, which is defined as a loss of property worth less than $400. Those minor thefts increased from 137 to 156, while grand theft was up from 41 to 50. Auto thefts remained constant at six. And there were no arsons in Ojai last year, compared with one the year before.
Norris noted the same trends in 2007 that prompted a dramatic increase in crime the year before, the theft of valuables from cars and citizens’ relaxed attitude about securing their property.
“The rise in the crime rate is tied to the rise in thefts,” Norris said. “There have just been a rash of thefts from vehicles. It’s just a widespread phenomenon, not just in Ojai. So people just have to get a lot more careful about not leaving valuables in their cars.”
Hiking trailheads are one popular spot locally for auto burglaries, Norris said. “They don’t hesitate to smash a window if they see something they want,” he said.
The increase in thefts is related not only to vehicle burglaries but also to thefts at local schools, Norris said.
The school thefts often included the loss of MP players, I-pods or cell phones from backpacks or lockers, he said.
Police have been successful in many of the theft cases, he said.
“Many suspects in these thefts from vehicles have been arrested: We have seen a sharp decrease since October,” Norris wrote in a brief analysis of the year’s trends. “(And the) school resource officer has made several arrests related to school thefts.”
When all eight categories of serious property and violent crime are taken together, the number of crimes per 1,000 Ojai residents — the city’s crime rate — increased 3 percent last year to 32.34.
That’s nearly twice as high as the overall crime rate for all five cities and the unincorporated area that the Sheriff’s Department patrols.
By comparison, Thousand Oaks had a crime rate of 16.46 crimes per 1,000 residents, Moorpark 17.21, Camarillo 17.76 and Fillmore 23.7.