VALLEY'S TRANSIT CRIME LOW VS. L.A.'S; AREA SEES JUST 6.7% OF MTA INCIDENTS.

Byline: Douglas Haberman Daily News Staff Writer

Once the San Fernando Valley's most dangerous bus route, Line 420 between Panorama City and downtown accounted for 28 assaults in 1994 and 14 in 1995, according to the MTA's most recent figures.

But so far this year, only three have been reported on that line, reflecting what the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and police said is a sharp decline in Valley transit crime.

In fact, such crime is dramatically low compared with that of the rest of the city.

``Transit crime in the Valley has traditionally been extremely low,'' said Capt. Vance Proctor, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department's Transit Bus Division.

The Valley has nearly 20 percent of the MTA's bus routes and accounts for more than 10 percent its passengers. But of the 623 crimes reported citywide from January to October on MTA buses or at MTA bus stops, only 42 of them - or 6.7 percent - were in the Valley, police said.

Exactly why the Valley transit system has so few crimes compared with the rest of Los Angeles is not clear. Part is due to an overall decline in crime across the city and the nation, police said.

Because the LAPD took over policing buses and bus stops a year ago and keeps statistics differently from how the MTA police did, Proctor said he could not draw conclusions about crime trends. However, he said incidents of transit-related crime occur most often on routes with the most crowded buses.

In October, the Valley had only five of the 119 reported crimes citywide that involved MTA buses or bus stops, according to the LAPD. During September, the Valley accounted for only one of 94 crimes reported.

``It makes sense from the standpoint there are fewer danger points in the Valley than there are in other parts of the city,'' said Goldy Norton, spokesman for the United Transportation Union, which represents about 4,000 MTA bus and rail operators.

Twenty-eight MTA bus lines, which branch off into 38 routes, serve the Valley, including Burbank and Glendale, with an average of 143,000 boardings per weekday, said MTA spokesman Marc Littman.

There are 191 MTA bus routes altogether, and total boardings have averaged 1.1 million per weekday for the past several years, Littman said.

Proctor said most assaults on buses or at bus stops are misdemeanors ``with no serious injury.'' About one-third of the assaults are on bus drivers, he said.

The LAPD transit police have been doing a good job keeping crime down in the first year after the Police Department absorbed a large portion of the former MTA transit police force, Norton said.

``It's not worse than it has been, and it's probably a little better,'' he said.

Ninety police officers serve in the LAPD's Transit Bus Division, many of them riding undercover to catch graffiti vandals, pickpockets and other criminals, said Proctor. A graffiti suppression team is deployed regularly in the Valley, he said.

In the LAPD's Van Nuys Division, only 17 transit-related crimes have been reported this year through October - five assaults, one robbery, two thefts, seven incidents of vandalism, one threat against another and one weapons violation.

Even fewer bus-related crimes have been reported in every other LAPD division in the Valley - 10 in the North Hollywood Division, seven in the West Valley Division, six in the Foothill Division and two in the Devonshire Division.

In comparison, 131 bus-related crimes have been reported so far this year in the department's Central Division, 102 in the Rampart Division and 63 in the Wilshire Division.

Even the numbers for vandalism - primarily graffiti - are far lower in the Valley than elsewhere in the city.

For example, the Wilshire Division has reported 32 cases of bus and bus-stop vandalism so far this year, and the Rampart Division has reported 45 cases, vs. just seven cases in the Van Nuys Division and lower totals in other Valley divisions.