Simi Tops Thousand Oaks as Safest Large U. S. City

Simi Valley was the safest large city in the U.S. for the first half of 1996, nudging east county rival Thousand Oaks for the top spot, according to FBI statistics.

Authorities downplayed the importance of midyear figures because they measure such a short period of time.

“We aren’t doing anything different manpower-wise than we had been doing,” said Sgt. Bob Gardner, a Simi Valley police spokesman. “You need to look at it over a considerable time to know how meaningful the statistics really are and whether the trends are long term.”

The new crime report does reflect the traditional status of Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks as among America’s three safest cities with populations of at least 100,000.

Thousand Oaks ranked as the nation’s most crime-free large city in 1994 and 1995, while Simi Valley was first in 1993. Among them, the two cities have ranked first nationally five of the last seven years.

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.

For the first six months of last year, Simi Valley reported a 24% drop in crimes compared to the same period in 1995--1,197 crimes compared to 1,584 the previous year. Violent offenses fell from 92 to 65, including a murder-free first half of the year, and property crimes were off nearly as dramatically.

Over the same period, Thousand Oaks reported a tiny drop, from 1,358 crimes for the first half of 1995 to 1,349 last year.

However, the city had a substantial increase in violence crime, with robberies up from 31 to 39 and serious assaults increasing from 69 to 93.

Amherst Town, N.Y.--a college town in suburban Buffalo--placed third in the nation for the first half of 1996, followed by Santa Clarita; Livonia, an affluent suburb of Detroit; and two more California suburbs, Sunnyvale and Irvine.

Oxnard, the only other local city included in the FBI report, saw serious crimes fall from 4,103 to 3,882 from one midyear to the next. And while murders were up from four to 10, violent crime was down overall, as aggravated assaults dropped from 598 to 318.

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