Police Chief Cites Progress on Crime, Warns of SANDAG Report

La Mesa saw year-to-year improvements in a variety of crime rates, Police Chief Al Lanning told the City Council on Tuesday. That included a drop in the property crime rate from 44.3 per 1,000 residents to 31.6 for the first quarter of the year.

But when the San Diego Association of Governments releases its annual figures for cities in coming weeks, La Mesa may not look so good, he said.

“The city’s crime rate for 2010 increased 10 percent compared with 2009,” Lanning said in his quarterly crime report. “The region for 2010 had a 4 percent decrease.”

So later this month or in May, he said, when SANDAG releases its annual crime report, “we may not compare real favorably with some of the other cities.”

“I just want to forewarn you on that,” Lanning told the council. “But we’ve kind of isolated the reasons for that [spike], and feel that, based on recent statistics, we have those things under control.”

For example, a high incidence of vehicle burglaries in several parts of town led to targeted efforts by patrol officers and special operations “to get a handle on those things,” he said.

Citing two successive 30-day periods, he said police cut nighttime vehicle burglaries by 47 percent. Overall crimes of this category were down by 37 percent.

“This is another good example that, rather than throwing money at a problem, we can take specific resources, apply them in a way that combines information from our crime analysis and the talents and skills of our officers, to [achieve] a good result,” Lanning said.

In a report provided to the council, other crime reductions were noted from first quarter 2010 to first quarter 2011, including:

• a 40 percent drop in burglaries (117 to 70).
• a 13 percent drop in violent crimes (61 to 53).
• a 27 percent drop in property crimes (630 to 459).
• a 26 percent drop in FBI Index crimes, serious ones like rape, robbery and assault. (La Mesa recorded no homicides in 2010 or so far in 2011.)

Notably, the first three months of 2011 saw 62 auto thefts in La Mesa, compared with 104 during what Lanning calls the “perfect storm” first quarter of 2010, when 104 cars were reported stolen—a drop of 40 percent.

Recently re-elected Councilman Ernie Ewin, noting “now that we’re beyond the election period,” said the figures Lanning cited continue to confirm “what you reported last year relative to our progress [on] being the lowest [crime rate in decades].”

He said the Police Department is among agencies doing very well at letting citizens “know what’s happening in the city.”

“Oftentimes,” Ewin said, “because of the amount of information we convey … to the citizens about [crime], there tends to be a sense that it’s worse than what it really is—because we’re so upfront.”

He said he firmly believed La Mesa is among the best at reporting information to residents, including the use of the Nixle system of cell-phone alerts, and “I’d put that up against any other jurisdiction because I think our folks know what’s happening.”

Mayor Art Madrid concurred, citing the use of amplified announcements from Sheriff’s Department helicopters at police request to convey information about recent incidents.

“The reality is if you don’t maintain an open, transparent relationship with the residents, then all of a sudden they’ll become suspicious of all the activities going on,” Madrid said.

But later speakers, on a different issue, challenged the city on its commitment to openness.

Village merchant Bill Jaynes of All Things Bright and British repeated his contention that early meetings of the Property-Based Business Improvement District (PBID) Formation Committee violated the state’s Brown Act, which mandates open public meetings for certain agencies of government.

Jaynes said the committee—looking at how to structure a business district where property owners taxed themselves for street and service improvements—didn’t keep minutes of its early meetings and even turned away a local businesswoman from attending what are now public gatherings.

City Attorney Glenn Sabine, when asked about possible Brown Act issues, told the council: “I’ve heard this before, but we haven’t looked at details.”

Councilman Dave Allan pressed Sabine to commit to a review of the early PBID meetings, saying: “These are pretty heavy accusations. If this city is in violation, we need to look at that.”

Allan—a member of the council’s PBID subcommittee along with Madrid, since the city is a property owner in the potential improvement district—said he hadn’t attended any of its meetings.  He said he didn’t want the city to appear “domineering” over its discussions.

Repeating himself for emphasis, Madrid said: “The allegations of [Brown Act violations] are serious allegations, serious allegations.”

Sabine said he would look into the Brown Act questions and report back at the next meeting April 26, if Jaynes provided specific examples of violations.

Village bookstore owner Craig Maxwell also spoke on the PBID, saying “our concern has focused, at least in part, on the lack of transparency.”

He recalled how he and his father lost the land of their old family business in El Cajon to the Metropolitan Transit System in the 1990s under an eminent domain seizure process. (See attached video of Maxwell.)

“We could have contested this in court,” Maxwell told the council, “but we were at wit’s end—and at our financial end.”

Maxwell, a former candidate for mayor, further said: “We had been dealt a terrible injustice by the government. And as we consider the PBID, and the ramifications it will have for many people on the street—when we consider this not as a Village improvement but as an indirect means for picking winners and losers on the [La Mesa] Boulevard, a way of helping those who already have money prosper, and of weeding out some of the smaller businesses—I hope we can keep the story I just told tonight in mind.”

Story updated at 10:15 p.m. April 13, 2011.