Looking Closer at Crime in Lake Forest

In our first article we found -

· RSM, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Woods, and Mission Viejo consistently have lower crime rates than we do whether we are looking at Part 1 or Part 2 crimes.

· Our crime rate is nearly double that of RSM and 63% higher than Aliso Viejo.

· Even though Mission Viejo has significantly more people than Lake Forest, their crime rate is lower. Usually larger cities have higher crime rates.

In our second article we looked at several factors to see whether or not they contributed to our relatively high crime rate. These were

• · Population
• · Proximity to North County
• · Proximity to the freeways
• · Income
• · Race
• · Spending on Police

None of these factors seemed to hint at why the crime rate in Lake Forest is the highest among our neighbors.

Since publishing the second article I was prompted to do research on the relationship between crime rate and other factors – Median Home Price, Percent of Renters, Age of Residents, Presence of Massage Parlors, and Date of Incorporation. Here are the results –

Median Home Price – Among the 6 cities, Lake Forest in 2015 and 2016 had one of the highest median home price sales. Only Laguna Niguel had a higher sale price in both years. So cities with lower median home sale prices consistently had lower crime rates than Lake Forest. The idea that low home prices correlate with high crime in this area doesn’t hold up. It may be a sound principle when look at communities that differ greatly, but here in Southern California the differences are not so great.

Percent of Renters – Aliso Viejo has the highest percent of renters (39%) while RSM, Laguna Niguel, and Lake Forest have about 29%. Since AV and RSM have relatively high percentages of renters, the association between renting and higher crime doesn’t hold up.

Resident Age – Looking at the prime 18 to 44 year old age group, Aliso Viejo had the highest percent (44%) and RSM and Lake Forest were tied at about 37%. Interestingly enough this followed the pattern for percent of people living in rental units. Once again the likely culprit was not guilty.

Incorporation Date – The idea that newer cities have lower crime rates is true, up to a point. The 3 newest cities (RSM, AV, LW) did have collectively lower crime rates, and the 3 oldest cities (LF, MV, LN) did have higher crime rates. But both Mission Viejo and Laguna Niguel were incorporated prior to Lake Forest (1988, 1989, and 1991) and both these cities have lower crime rates. So the higher crime rate in Lake Forest can’t be blamed on being an “older” city, at least in terms of date of incorporation.

Presence of Massage Parlors – Someone wondered if the proliferation of massage parlors in Lake Forest was a cause of the increased crime, reasoning that massage parlors drew an unsavory clientele who before or after their massage went on a crime spree. It’s not a completely unreasonable theory, so I checked it out using “Massage” listings in Yelp for each City and then dividing the number of services by the population. Though Lake Forest does have a high number of massage parlors, when you divided by the population, per 10,000 people, Lake Forest comes in behind RSM (3.2) and Mission Viejo (2.5). Once again our search has been in vain.

Bear in mind that the relationship between crime in our small community may not be revealed by the univariate analyses being performed here. There may be a more complex interaction among the variables, so that any one variable by itself may not contribute to the problem, but in combination there may be some predictive validity. With such small samples (6 cities, 10 variables) it’s difficult to tease out these subtleties.

So where can we look? That’s our concern next time.

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 August 13 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.