Crime is Up in Lake Forest

A resident recently e-mailed me to ask if the crime rate in Lake Forest had increased. I went to the City’s website (Click Here) since the Council hadn’t been informed of any changes, and guess what I found?

Between January and July 2015 our Part 1 crimes (i.e., crimes against people) had gone up on average 35%. Here’s the run down by category –

• · Larceny/Theft - +43%
• · Stolen Vehicles - +32%
• · Aggravated Assault + 25%
• · Robbery - + 25%
• · Burglary - +21%
• · Murder - Unchanged
• · Rape – (-25%)

Right away you can see that the good news is that murder hasn’t increased (It was 0 in 2014 and 0 so far in 2015, but it was 2 in 2013) and rape is down from 12 to 9, a decrease of 25%. All the other categories however are up. In total there are 156 more Part 1 crimes so far in 2015 than in the previous year. That’s not good.

For some reason the City website does not publish Part 2 crimes (e.g., DUI, Weapons possessions, Vandalism), so we have no data on those crimes, but I did some digging around and found this -

• · Possession of Narcotics - +111%
• · DUI - +50%
• · Possession of Marijuana - +49%
• · Weapons Possession - +29%
• · Vandalism - +20%
• · Receiving stolen property - +17%
• · Assault - +8%
• · Runaways – Unchanged
• · Drunk/Disorderly – (-22%)

Bear in mind that OCSD publishes the crime numbers but not the crime rate. Since we are producing new homes so quickly we are experiencing a population growth, so some increase in crime numbers can be expected as a result of all the new homes going in. Even a cursory inspection reveals that our increase in numbers is higher than our increase in population, so the increase in real, whether we look at crime numbers or crime rate.

I asked the Police Chief what was going on and he believes “that the increase is attributable, in part, to the passage of Proposition 47…in the November 2014 election [which] re-classified various crimes that were once felonies to misdemeanors…The statutory reclassification..would have enabled officers to arrest individuals, leading to potential jail time, now only warrant a citation….Consequently it is possible that this change is enabling potential offenders to commit multiple crimes now that the punishment for these offenses is reduced by State law.”

To deal with this problem, the City has “brought in additional resources from the Sheriff’s Department regional teams such as the Directed Enforcement Team, the Gang Enforcement Team, and the Narcotics Unit, to assist in targeting specific types of crimes.”

(For a copy of the complete memo from the Police Chief, e-mail me at GardnerForCouncil@gmail.com)

The bottom line for those of us who live in Lake Forest is that crime is up, so be extra careful.

COMMENTS

It came to my attention that at times the COMMENTS section of the Patch doesn’t work. I have no control over this. I can neither enable or disable the Comments section nor can I delete or edit other people’s work. If you encounter this problem, please notify the Patch. If you want to discuss the issues raised in these articles you’re welcome to join more than 300 of us at Lake Forest Town Square, or you can e-mail me individually, come to my office hours, or attend my Town hall meetings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on December 12 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.

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