Bucking Trend, Youth Arrests in S. County Rise

While juvenile arrests continued to decline across the nation, south Orange County communities bucked the trend last year with a 31% jump in the number of youths taken into custody, according to an analysis of FBI statistics released Sunday.

Law enforcement officials attributed the increase to an aggressive crackdown by the Sheriff’s Department on youth crime in South County. The effort has included bicycle patrols around teen haunts in shopping malls and parks as well as routine investigations of campus crimes.

Deputies also have targeted a new breed of suburban gangs made up of mostly well-to-do teenagers who are blamed for a string of unprovoked assaults and novice crime sprees. The effort has drawn fire from some who believe they are overreacting, confusing adolescent rebellion with hard-core gang crime.

But officials make no apologies for the results.

“We end up investigating every little thing that happens. If a juvenile drives a car over someone’s lawn, we’ll get involved,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Tom Davis, who heads the department’s operations in South County. “About 45% of all our investigators are tied up with juvenile offenders.”

The surge in South County contrasts with the situation in many North County cities, which reported declines in the number of juveniles taken into custody. Santa Ana, for example, experienced a 19% drop in juvenile arrests last year, echoing a nationwide trend, according to a Times analysis of FBI and state crime data. The number of arrests in Costa Mesa dropped 38%, and Buena Park dropped 29%.

The FBI report found that arrests nationwide are falling even more quickly among juveniles than among adults--despite a wave of public concern over a barrage of violent episodes in U.S. schools.

Although juvenile crime has been declining steadily since about 1993, federal officials say this is the most significant drop in recent years. The decline is even more impressive given that the juvenile population has continued to grow, now numbering about 70 million.

Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters said local anti-gang efforts have put so many teenage gang members behind bars in the last decade that it’s only natural that arrests would eventually decline.

Research has found that a small percentage of teens--about 8%--account for the bulk of serious juvenile crime, he added, so getting them off the streets has had a significant effect.

“We’ve gone after and targeted the leadership of the gangs,” he said.

Sheriff’s Department Taking Firm Stance

Youth violence has traditionally been less a problem in South County communities. Despite the latest jump, juvenile arrest rates are still lower in South County than in Santa Ana and other North County communities.

Overall, youth arrests rose by nearly a third in South County cities and unincorporated areas, to 453 in 1998. Mission Viejo and San Clemente more than doubled the number of arrests, followed by Laguna Niguel and San Juan Capistrano.

The increase in juvenile arrests came as overall crime continued to decline in these communities, according to a Times analysis. Crime fell 22% in Mission Viejo and 30% in San Clemente.

The Sheriff’s Department argues that its firm stance on youth crime is needed to prevent street gangs from taking root in the area. Aggressive police action sends a message to teens who might commit crimes, they said.

Lt. Stan Jacquot, who heads the department’s Mission Viejo operations, said his deputies are attempting to identify and more closely monitor teens who might be involved in criminal activities. Instead of simply patrolling in cars, teams of deputies are taking to bicycles so they can more easily access shopping centers, schools and other places were teens congregate.

The most controversial element of the crackdown is the focus on so-called “bully gangs.” The groups, some of which model themselves after the grease-haired tough guys of the 1950s and go by such names as Upper Class Rebels and Wanderers, are believed to account for a third of all gang membership in South County, according to Sheriff’s Department investigators.

Authorities accused the groups of several random attacks and petty crimes. In a closely watched attempted-murder trial earlier this year, officials successfully prosecuted members of the Slick 50s as a street gang.

While many residents applauded the get-tough policy, some parents believe deputies and prosecutors are treating “bully gang” members too harshly.

It remains unclear, however, whether the crackdown will result in less crime. Experts warn that such arrest reports should be viewed less as an indicator of crime than as a window into crime-fighting techniques.

“It’s often what the police do rather than what the kids are doing that drives those [arrest] figures,” said Gilbert Geis, professor emeritus of criminology at UC Irvine.

Even with the rise in South County, arrests of juveniles countywide fell 1% last year, while adult arrests dropped by 11%. Overall, the county’s rate of juvenile arrests for serious crimes is lower now than at any time in the last two decades.

The FBI’s index of serious crimes includes seven offenses: homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft.

The national findings of the report encouraged many experts.

“This is more good news, no doubt about it,” said Shay Bilchik, who heads the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

“You have a horrific incident like the Columbine shootings, and that paints a picture of a continuing problem that has not gone away. But people are shocked when you try to tell them that juvenile crime is actually going down.”

The gruesome assault at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., six months ago was just one of more than a dozen deadly school attacks by gun-wielding students in the last two years. Other high-profile crimes--such as allegations in Minneapolis three weeks ago that an 8-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by seven boys, ages 6 to 13--have fanned fears that society is raising a new “Lord of the Flies” generation, ever more prone to violence and crime.

Amid such concerns, many states have pushed for tougher sentencing laws for juvenile offenders in the last several years, and California voters will consider a statewide initiative in March that would make it easier to prosecute as adults offenders as young as 14.

Juvenile crime experts say, however, that Sunday’s figures from the FBI confirm that the country has made impressive strides toward reducing crime among youths, with double-digit declines in most areas of serious and violent crime arrests.

The decline mirrors the pattern seen in Los Angeles County, where the juvenile arrest rate dropped 13% from 1997 to 1998, compared with a 7% decline among adults, according to separate figures from the California Department of Justice. Statewide, juvenile arrests dropped 7% and adult arrests fell 6%.

Several Factors Cited for Drop in Arrests

Juvenile specialists said a combination of factors may help explain the trend, including a booming economy that provides more jobs for youths, tougher gun control measures such as trigger lock mandates, and increased attention to juvenile delinquency. Federal aid to states for delinquency prevention and intervention has soared 500% in the last five years, with $550 million in funds this year, Bilchik said.

Sunday’s FBI report found that the number of arrests nationwide of those under the age of 18, including those arrested for less serious offenses such as vagrancy and vandalism, fell 4.2% from 1.8 million to 1.725 million. Arrests for homicide fell 11.6% to 1,429, motor vehicle theft dropped 15.1% to 36,477, drug abuse violations declined 3.4% to 138,054, and weapons charges fell 8.3% to 30,745. The number of runaways, meanwhile, dropped 14.9% to about 44,000.

There were some troubling exceptions to the trend, however. Perhaps most notably, the number of juvenile arrests for driving under the influence rose nearly 13% to 12,782.

Riverside County Dist. Atty. Grover Trask, who headed a statewide task force on juvenile crime, said the figures suggest that high-profile episodes such as the Columbine shootings “have been taken out of perspective,” sensationalized by the media.

“The reality is that these offenders represent a very small percentage of our juvenile population,” he said in an interview.

As encouraging as the statistics appear, however, Trask said that the key test in California will come in the next five years, when the number of children in the state from 12 to 17--the age group often most susceptible to be lured into crime--is expected to soar. Federal estimates project that California will have the biggest growth rate in the nation in its juvenile population, with a 34% increase by 2015.

“What kind of effect will that have on crime? That’s really the million-dollar question, and that’s why we need to view these numbers with some caution,” Trask said.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this report.