WINNING THE WAR; L.A.'S RATE OF SERIOUS CRIMES DOWN, MIRRORING NATIONAL TREND.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

Serious crime reported to police declined 3 percent nationwide in 1996 - the fifth annual decrease in a row - led by an impressive 11 percent drop in homicides, according to preliminary figures released Sunday by the FBI.

Los Angeles reported an even steeper drop than the national figure in the number of murders, with 140 fewer homicides, or a 16 percent decline over 1995.

The city also did better than the nation overall in total reported serious crimes with a 12 percent decrease from 1995 to 1996.

Nationally, the 3 percent drop in the seven serious reported crimes - murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft and auto theft - was the largest since a 3.3 percent decline in 1982.

In another indicator, ``violent crimes'' dropped 7 percent nationwide, which President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno immediately hailed as representing the largest decrease since 1961. Violent crimes include robbery, aggravated assault, rape and homicide, the report said.

``The tide is turning, but there's a lot more to do,'' said James Alan Fox, dean of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston.

Other area cities for the most part joined Los Angeles in reporting more dramatic declines than those recorded across the nation as a whole.

Like Los Angeles, Glendale saw a large drop in its crime index - the seven serious reported crimes - with 12 percent fewer crimes than in 1995. But counter to the national trend, Glendale logged an increase in its number of homicides in 1996 with 14, compared to eight in 1995.

Consistent with the national downturn in murders, neighboring Burbank had one less homicide than the five logged in 1995. The city, however, registered only a 2 percent drop in the seven serious reported crimes.

Search for explanation

Experts caution that they do not have an adequate theory to explain why crime has declined in the United States so persistently for five years, after a sharp surge from 1986 to 1991 blamed largely on the spread of crack cocaine, and the culture of guns and gangs that it fostered.

Among law enforcement officials, politicians and some criminologists, the credit is given largely to more aggressive police tactics.

But James Q. Wilson, a professor of management at the University of California, Los Angeles who has studied and pioneered some modern police tactics, said he doubts policing is the major factor behind the decline.

``Crime is down in cities with lots of cops being more aggressive, but there are other cities that are down where community policing is barely getting off the ground,'' he said.

Wilson said, for instance, that while the L.A. police have become ``one of the least aggressive departments,'' the number of reported homicides still fell to 709 in 1996 from 849 in 1995.

``I've asked several L.A. police officers why the murder rate is down in L.A., and they tell me, `We haven't the faintest idea.' ''

Los Angeles Police Department officials could not be reached Sunday for comment.

Wilson said the best theory he can come up with is that the decline ``has to be something in the minds of those doing the killing.''

``An awful lot of people who are likely to kill are now either dead themselves, or in prison or have decided to cool it for a while,'' he said.

Fall in violent crimes

If the violent crime figure is confirmed by the final FBI report, normally published in the fall, it would mark a highly significant achievement, criminologists said. It would be the first time violent crime had dropped below the level it soared to in the modern crime wave that engulfed the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The criminologists were particularly intrigued by the 11 percent decline in homicides, the most accurately measured crime and the one that Americans fear the most.

Alfred Blumstein, a respected criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, suggested that an 11 percent drop in the number of homicides would work out to a rate of about 7.3 per 100,000 population.

``That would be a stunningly low number,'' Blumstein said.

It would mark the lowest homicide rate nationwide since 1969, and would mean that the United States for the first time would have broken through the rate of eight to 10 per 100,000 that the nation has oscillated around since 1970, as the modern crime plague exploded, he said.

Innovative tactics

Crime experts point to a series of factors when trying to explain the drop in crime. These include innovative police tactics in many cities, sometimes referred to as community policing or problem-solving policing; a plethora of neighborhood volunteer efforts to change juvenile behavior; and the greatly increased number of criminals in prison.

Other factors include tougher federal gun control laws, a stabilization of the drug trade and the aging of the baby boom population as it has passed out of its prime years for committing crime.

``Crime is down, but not out,'' Fox said, noting that homicide rates among juveniles remain more than twice as high as they were as recently as 1985.

The FBI report showed that the bulk of the decline in homicides occurred in the nation's biggest cities. Among the country's regions, only the South had an increase in serious crime in 1996, up 2 percent, the FBI said.

In the Los Angeles region, Palmdale also countered the national trend with the number of seven serious reported crimes rising by 177, or 3 percent. Murders in Palmdale meanwhile fell from seven to six.

Also in contrast with national figures, Lancaster reported a jump in the number of murders with a total of 12 homicides in 1996 - three more than in 1995. The number of serious reported crimes overall fell, however, with 322 or 5 percent less than in 1995.

In Santa Clarita, the crime index fell by 17 percent. Santa Clarita's number of homicides dropped by half from four to two.

Thousand Oaks, consistently ranked one of the safest cities of its size in the United States, saw a jump in its number of homicides to three in 1996. There were none in 1995. But the number of serious reported crimes declined 7 percent with 200 fewer incidents than in 1995.

Simi Valley logged only one murder in 1996, compared to four in 1995. The city's crime index fell by 17 percent, with 507 fewer incidents reported than in 1995.

CAPTION(S):

2 charts

CHART: (1) Crime statistics in local cities

(2) U.S. crimes rates drop in 1996