MAGAZINE RANKS CITY 8TH SAFEST; HIGH FEAR OF THEFT ALSO KEY IN STUDY.

Byline: Stacy Brown Daily News Staff Writer

Theft is the crime Americans fear the most, even more than assault, rape or murder according to a Money magazine poll that lists Santa Clarita as the eighth-safest city among U.S. cities of 100,000 population or more.

In a national telephone survey, the New York-based magazine quizzed 500 people about the crime they feared most. The magazine said 62 percent ranked burglary as their top concern, with car theft (55 percent) and robbery (54 percent) next on the list.

Jeanhee Kim, a reporter who helped conduct the survey for the magazine, said a weight system was used in conjunction with the FBI crime reports released last month to establish their figures.

``To make the latest FBI data useful, Money asked Morgan Quitno - a statistical research firm - to weight the figures according to the crimes you fear the most and then apply them to 207 cities with populations of at least 100,000,'' Kim said. In the FBI safest cities crime stats, Santa Clarita ranked as the fourth-safest city in the country.

``My guess is that Santa Clarita has a low violent crime rate, but their property crime rate may be a little higher,'' Kim said.

Los Angeles County sheriff's Capt. Mike Quinn, commander of the Santa Clarita station, said the city saw a decrease in both burglary and grand theft auto in the first nine months of 1997.

``Last year there were 781 burglaries over the first nine months compared with 597 this year. That's a decrease of 23.6 percent,'' Quinn said.

Santa Clarita also saw a 13 percent decrease in grand theft auto. During the first nine months of 1996 there were 377 auto thefts compared with just 328 in 1997, Quinn said.

``We need to stress that we have a unique relationship with the citizens here. They are active and they work with us,'' Quinn said.

The captain also said that deputies and citizens have banded together to prevent burglary.

``We have encouraged our community to cut shrubbery to eliminate hiding places for would-be burglars and we have encouraged the installation of alarms in houses and cars as well as the use of The Club (anti-theft device) to help prevent car thefts,'' Quinn said.

The Money magazine poll said that assault, rape and murder were feared by 43 percent, 39 percent and 35 percent, respectively, of those in the survey. Money ranked Amherst, N.Y., Simi Valley, Sterling Heights, Mich., Thousand Oaks and Sunnyvale, Calif., as the five safest cities. It lists Gary, Ind., Newark, N.J., Atlanta, New Orleans and Detroit as the five most dangerous cities in the country.