I first got interested in crime statistics in Lake Forest a few years ago when the City Manager and Council members Voigts and McCullough were touting our City as “one of the safest in the Country.” I originally moved here because it was a great location, good weather, and had a relatively low crime, but I was surprised to learn that we were so low that we were “one of the safest in the country”. Being a curious person, with too much time on my hands, I investigated the situation and that investigation led to a series of annual reports about the status of crime in our City. This is the latest version of that report. Click here for the data on 2012 and 2011.
All the data reported here comes from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD). I focus on the 10 cities in Southern California that are patrolled by OCSD because this way I don’t have to worry about different methods of cataloging crime which might happen when you compare two different Police departments. I also include every one of the 10 cities, but it should be obvious to anyone with a pulse that some of the characteristics of the 10 cities differ to such an extent that we can expect differences in the crime rate because of their unique characteristics. For example, Laguna Woods is the home to older people and therefore we can expect lower crime rates (unless stealing pudding is a crime now). Cities like Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente are tourist destinations, and as such, they are more likely to attract more crimes, and even if they don’t, they do attract more people, so when you calculate the population statistics (dividing the crimes by the City’s official population) they are at a disadvantage since the population of the city is much less than the average number of people who come in and out of the city on a daily basis, especially in the summer.
Another advantage of comparing Lake Forest with our neighbors is that, generally speaking, we control for macro-economic and environmental variables which are not controlled for when you look across the country. In addition, in Southern California we have a group of relatively smaller cities, so the problem of comparing large cities with small cities doesn’t emerge. As you go up in City size, crime rates increase, even when you control for population size. Down here we are more or less homogeneous. Even Mission Viejo, the largest of the 10 cities under study, doesn’t resemble a “City” in the traditional sense.
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Having said all this by way of introduction, tomorrow we’ll look at Part 1 crimes. These are the most serious crimes (e.g., murder, forcible rape, assault, robberies, burglary, motor vehicle theft). We’ll look at crime rate and also crime solving. We’ll follow that with Part 2 crimes, which are less serious, but still cause for concern (e.g., vandalism, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, forgery, vehicular manslaughter, fraud). Then in Part 3 we’ll sum up.
