Plunge in rate of property crimes catches cities' officials by surprise

By FOX BUTTERFIELD
New York Times

SAN DIEGO With little public notice, property crimes in the United
States have fallen sharply since 1980, data from the FBI show, with
burglary rates down by almost half. That gives New York a lower burglary
rate than London, and Los Angeles fewer burglaries than Sydney, Australia.

The drop in property crimes burglary, larceny and auto thefts has
been obscured by the high level of violent crimes like murder and robbery,
which spurred demands for tougher sentencing laws.

The drop in property crimes which outnumbers violent crime by 7to1
has been so large that the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and Canada
have overall crime rates as high as that in the United States and just as
many criminals per capita, said professor Franklin Zimring, the director of
the Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California at Berkeley.

Some explanations for the fall in property crime are similar to those given
by lawenforcement officials and criminologists for the drop in violent
crime in the past several years improved police tactics, a decline in
the teenage population, greater community involvement and longer prison
sentences.

A number of experts also cite the greater use of alarm systems and what
many see as a crucial element, the switch from heroin to crack cocaine
among street criminals. Crack, unlike heroin, produces a brief, intense
high, creating an incessant need for cash, while burglary is timeconsuming
and generates stolen goods that must still be sold to get money.

"One of the most remarkable things about the decline in burglary is that it
is so substantial that it is unprecedented in magnitude compared to any
other fluctuation in crime rates over the last century," said Scott Decker,
a criminologist at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and coauthor of
Armed Robbers in Action: Stickups and Street Culture, to be published this
month.

Though the decline in property crime has occurred throughout the United
States, nowhere has it been greater than in San Diego.

>From 1980 to the end of 1996, the burglary rate plunged 68 percent and the
larceny rate fell 37 percent, police data indicate. Larceny includes petty
thefts like shoplifting, pickpocketing and automobile breakins.

Motorvehicle thefts, the third major type of property crime counted by the
FBI in its annual crime reports, have declined 61 percent in San Diego
since reaching a record high in 1989.

San Diego Police Chief Jerry Sanders, unlike Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and
former Police Commissioner William Bratton in New York, is careful not to
claim credit for his city's sharp drop.

"It's happening in so many different cities that are doing so many
different things," Sanders said. "I think it is hard to put your finger on
what's causing the decline."

In addition, the chief said, "The problem with claiming better policing is
responsible is that someday crime is going to go up again, and I wouldn't
want to be on the other side of that question."

But in addition to the often cited causes for the drop, Sanders has his
favorite theory: "As the crime rate comes down, it is starting to bring
people with it," he said. "They are starting to realize they themselves can
do something about it, so we have lots of citizens out solving problems on
their own."

Take Agnes Brookes, a 69yearold retired church secretary in San Diego. In
1993, with time on her hands and wanting to give something back to her
community, Brookes joined the Retired Senior Volunteer Patrol, a group of
400 older residents, including former doctors, firefighters, corporate
executives and Navy officers who undergo three weeks of training at the
police academy and wear a shield and uniform that look like regular police
dress.

As part of her training, Brookes took a course in what is known as
"problemsolving policing," innovative police tactics that focus on issues
like why many crimes repeatedly occur at the same place or how to design
environmental safeguards against criminals.

Her instructor assigned her to see what could be done about a selfstorage
warehouse that had experienced 150 burglaries in the previous six months,
many of them thefts from sailors who had left their belongings there while
aboard Navy ships.

The police were having no luck solving the breakins and regarded the hours
consumed in writing reports on the burglaries as a waste of time they might
have used to chase robbers or other violent criminals.

Brookes surveyed the warehouse and after checking with all the other
selfstorage businesses in the city, decided the problem was sloppy
management: people who had no business at the warehouse were allowed to
drive through the locked front gate behind customers.

So Brookes, in her powderblue uniform shirt, pressured the owner into
changing the manager, got new lighting and locks installed and added a
device that required customers to know an exit code.

In the three months after her work, there was only one burglary, and the
culprit was caught. There have been no incidents since.

For Sanders, people like Brookes are essential to his new style of
communityoriented policing, especially because San Diego, with only 1.7
police officers per thousand residents, has the lowest ratio of officers
per capita in the nation. New York, by comparison, has 5.2 officers per
thousand and Washington has 6.84.

In what lawenforcement experts say is a major national trend, San Diego
has a total of 8,000 volunteers who assist its 2,036member police force.