2005/06/15 Council Agenda Packet

Consultants' Final Report - Page 18 and slightly less than one percent are homicides. Property crimes (or crimes against property) account for approximately eighty percent of the Part I total. Of these, 60 percent are thefts, 28 percent are burglaries, and 12 percent are auto thefts. Although it is tempting to think of Property crimes as less serious than Personal crimes, we caution the reader to remember that every crime has a deadly potential. Every armed robbery is a potential homicide. Every theft, burglary, or auto theft could quickly turn into a deadly confrontation. While subsequent analyses may distinguish among the seven crimes then, we do this for didactic Purposes only. In our opinion, in practice, any Part I crime poses a serious threat to public safety. With this caveat, we note that the mix of crimes in Garden Grove is not significantly different than the mix found in other California cities during the same period. This is also true of population -adjusted crime rates. Relative to other California cities, Garden Grove has neither a "high" or "low" crime rate.'-' To illustrate this point, Table 1 lists the 1985 Part I crime rates for twenty-four representative cities. Garden Grove ranks slightly above the median on homicide and auto theft, and slightly below the median on rape, robbery, assault, burglary, 2" The Garden Grove Police Department is organized into community "teams," however, and it is generally believed that this organizational structure encourages police -citizen interaction, including reporting of crimes. Other things being equal, Garden Grove is expected to have a higher crime rate than a city whose police department is structured along more traditional lines. EVER00359