Crime in Lake Forest is up 29%

At this week’s City Council meeting, a woman who lives on Springwater said that one of the reasons she bought her home recently was because she read on the City’s website that Lake Forest has one of the lowest crime rates in the U.S. Frequent readers of The Patch will know that this statement is a gross distortion of the truth perpetrated by City officials in the past. The fact is that our crime rate isn’t even among the lowest in Southern Orange County, where we continually come in 7th or 8th out of 12 cities patrolled by the OC Sheriff’s Department. That doesn’t mean our crime rate is “high” by national standards, but we are not among the safest cities in the U.S. and our record could be much better, given that most of our neighbors have lower crime rates.

So it worries me even more to learn that our crime rate is up 29% for the year (Click Here). Here’s the run down by category –

• · Stolen Vehicles +39%
• · Larceny/Theft +35%
• · Robbery +31%
• · Burglary +19%
• · Aggravated Assault +13%
• · Murder Unchanged
• · Rape -44%

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 18 to 10, a decrease of 44%. All the other categories however are up, and some (stolen vehicles, robbery) have continued to worsen. In total there are 170 more Part 1 crimes so far in 2015 than in the previous year. That’s not good.

The Police Chief 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.”

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

I’m going to ask the Police Chief to provide the Council with monthly reports on the crime rate, what’s being done, and how effective they are. In the past my colleagues on the Council (Voigts, Robinson, Hamilton) have opposed any type of Public Safety Committee that would work with the Police to help lower the crime rate (and also look at ways to lower costs without impacting service), but in light of the increases, I will try again to get their cooperation.

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 4 pm to 6 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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