California Crime Rate Declines

SACRAMENTO — State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren on Wednesday delivered more good news to Californians fearful for their personal safety: Major crimes plunged more than 12% in the first nine months of 1996 to rates not seen since the late 1960s.

“Perhaps we are beginning to feel a somewhat stronger sense of personal security as crime is being driven down to levels not seen since the days of Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers and the first couple of Super Bowls,” Lungren said in an upbeat assessment to Sacramento’s Comstock Club.

The preliminary crime figures, reflecting the continuation of a much-publicized four-year downward trend in major cities and counties, are especially encouraging to Lungren because they provide him a ready-made platform from which to launch his 1998 bid for governor.

The presumptive Republican nominee said the downward crime spiral will indeed figure in his quest for the state’s top job.

“I just know if it was going in the opposite direction folks would be talking about it. . . . So I would expect that’s a fair thing for me to be judged upon. Naturally, I’m willing to defend that,” Lungren said, citing the passage of the three-strikes sentencing law as a major reason for the decline.

Even as he is poised to run for higher office next year, Lungren is still savoring 1996, when he emerged onto the national political stage in a big way.

Among other things, he was trumpeted as a vice presidential candidate, lampooned in Doonesbury and, most recently, heralded by columnist George Will as a strong contender for president in 2000.

On Wednesday, he provided a preview of some other potential gubernatorial campaign themes: deploring America’s lost moral compass, upbraiding Hollywood and questioning whether the power of federal judges should be curbed.

Lungren aides brushed aside presidential talk as way too premature and focused on hard statistics that supporters hope will help propel the state’s top crime-fighter into the governor’s office.

Figures released by Lungren’s office shows that for the first nine months of 1996 compared to the same period in 1995, crime in most of Orange County’s largest cities declined, led by a whopping 81% plunge in Anaheim’s murder rate.

Anaheim Police Lt. Ted Labahn, commander of the bureau that handles robbery, homicides and sex crimes, said the drop was “primarily because of the great decrease in gang-related crimes.”

He pointed to successful street partnerships between police and probation officers in tracking gang members, comprehensive countywide computerized records and joint efforts between his department and other cities with gang problems.

Santa Ana, Orange, Costa Mesa, Fullerton and Garden Grove also saw declines in nearly every type of crime, from murder and assault to burglary and car thefts, in the first nine months of 1996.

But Irvine and Huntington Beach both experienced sizable increases in some violent crimes. Aggravated assaults were up more than 100% in Irvine, from 78 to 157, and 17 rapes occurred there between January and September of 1996, compared with 11 during the same period in 1995. In Huntington Beach, robberies jumped 27%, and assaults were up 13%.

Irvine City Manager Paul Brady said the real number of crimes was still small.

“With a city of 130,000 people, and a day population of another 165,000, numbers-wise those increases are not significant,” Brady said. “We don’t like to see it, but there are no trends, no rash of crimes. . . . No one is targeting Irvine.”

Crime also dropped 12% in unincorporated areas of the county handled by the Sheriff’s Department. Forcible rapes decreased by more than half, and car thefts by a third.

Not surprisingly, Lungren, a former Long Beach congressman who now lives in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville, said he wouldn’t be satisfied until the figures dipped even more.

The two-term attorney general’s goal is to trim crime rates to the levels of 1955, when he was a boy growing up and only 417 homicides were reported statewide compared to 3,530 last year.

“It may not be politically savvy to hold the ‘50s as the goal for the ‘90s and the new century, but at least where the crime index is concerned, I will be the first to do so,” Lungren said.

The attorney general said the drop in crime can be traced partly to the 1994 three-strikes law and other tougher sentencing measures, more prisons and the expansion of community-based policing.

State Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it is difficult to pinpoint what has triggered the drop in crime.

“The Democratic Legislature can take as much credit as Dan Lungren,” Burton said. “The attorney general doesn’t have anything to do with it. . . . We’re the ones who pass the laws.”

Meanwhile, Lungren singled out Hollywood for strong criticism.

While he said he sometimes has praise for the entertainment industry, Lungren questioned whether the entertainment media haven’t contributed to the “coarsening of our society.”

Saying he was surprised to find himself aligned with feminist Gloria Steinem, Lungren echoed her criticism of the movie “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” a controversial portrait of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and his 1st Amendment battles.

“While the 1st Amendment protects speech laced with trash, violence and hatred, it does not require that we celebrate it,” Lungren told his applauding audience.

Later, at a news conference, Lungren reiterated the criticism of the acclaimed motion picture but acknowledged that he hadn’t seen the film. He said he wouldn’t “go waste my money.”

“This almost uncritical acclaim and this revisionist history of Larry Flynt is reflective of a society which doesn’t always consider the seriousness of some of those cultural issues,” Lungren said.

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Janet Wilson.