CRIME PLUNGES IN STATE'S CITIES.

Byline: Staff and wire reports

Crime rates in California cities have plummeted more than in other parts of the country, according to the FBI's latest per capita figures, knocking many of the state's metropolitan areas down dramatically in the agency's national crime rankings.

The state's best-known cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, all saw significant drops in their combined violent and property crime index, as did inland areas. While crime overall nationwide has fallen, the decreases in California were greater than those in much of the country.

Although the total number of violent and property crimes in Los Angeles rose slightly from 1999 to 2,000, the county's crime rate - based on crimes per 100,000 people - went down.

The combined violent and property crime index in four booming inland California cities was so high just a few years ago that they earned the dubious distinction of being among the nation's 50 most crime-ridden metropolitan areas. All but one of those cities, Fresno, has dropped out of the top 50, according to the recently released figures in the FBI's 2000 Uniform Crime Report.

In Ventura County, which includes the communities of Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks with some of the nation's lowest crime rates, the 2000 index fell to 2,300 per 100,000 residents, compared with 2,336 in 1999.

The FBI crime rates reported Oct. 22 square with a state report issued two weeks ago on California crime during the first six months of this year, said Mike Van Winkel, a spokesman for the California Department of Justice.

When the FBI report was issued last week, Van Winkel attributed California's relatively low crime index to the fact the state has a number of relatively crime-free rural areas, as well as large suburban communities like Simi Valley, Santa Clarita and Thousand Oaks.

The news doesn't surprise Danielle Prater, a Stockton mother of two who used to see drug dealers and prostitutes regularly roaming the streets in her city. Now, children in her neighborhood leave their bikes unattended outside without a second thought, and she is comforted by the frequent sight of police officers.

``The whole town has gotten a whole lot better,'' the prep cook said during a shift at Chuck's Hamburgers, a cozy family-run restaurant that has packed in breakfast and lunch crowds for 41 years.

``Five years ago, I was worried,'' said Prater, 35. ``Now, I don't even lock my doors or roll my windows up.''

The Stockton-Lodi area, along with the metropolitan areas of Fresno, Modesto and Sacramento, had the highest crime indexes among California cities in 1995. All of them have dropped significantly since then, with Fresno dropping from No. 10 to No. 44.

Fresno was among the nation's top five cities for motor vehicle theft in 2000, alongside Miami, Phoenix-Mesa, New Orleans and Detroit. It was the only California city to rank in the top five of any of the major crime categories.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach area dropped out of the top 100 and was ranked just two notches above San Francisco in the year 2000 at No. 148. San Diego's crime index declined markedly, too, sending it down to the nation's 193rd slot.

Stockton, a San Joaquin Valley city traditionally known for its vast farms, is one of several cities attracting hordes of new residents as housing markets in the crowded San Francisco and San Jose metro areas become too pricey for many workers.

Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, suggested one reason for the dramatic drops in the growing Central Valley areas is that many of the new residents are ``generally law-abiding,'' although he cautioned that it's impossible to know definitively why the rates have changed.

``Anyone who tells you that they know why crime rates go up and down is lying,'' he said.

Malcolm Klein, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Southern California, agreed.

``We don't know to what extent it's police activity, to what extent it's the booming economy ... to what extent it's the act of God,'' he said of the declines.

Several police officers across the state speculated that beefed up community policing programs, increases in the size of police forces and low unemployment rates contributed to the declines, along with things including parole intervention programs and outreach to schoolchildren.

``We can't take all the credit for it,'' said Stockton Officer Doug Anderson. ``It's also the prosecutors, the schools and many other factors.''