Spring Valley Crime Rate Highest Among Unincorporated Areas of San Diego County

Spring Valley's crime rate for serious offenses was the highest in all unincorporated areas of San Diego County in 2010, according to SANDAG and its annual report. But the area’s violent crime rate fell by 2 percent between 2009 and 2010. Since 2006, that rate is up 14 percent.

The area has had nine recorded homicides since 2006. Spring Valley had 339 violent crimes in 2010—defined as  homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault— according to the San Diego Association of Governments in its report  “Thirty Years of Crime in the San Diego Region: 1981 through 2010.”

That figure is the second-highest in all areas of East County that were monitored, including Santee (153), Poway (90), Lemon Grove (156), La Mesa (185) and El Cajon, which led with 387 violent crimes in 2010.

In 2006, Spring Valley recorded 284 violent crimes and in 2009 it had 344, SANDAG reported in a detailed report by its Criminal Justice Research Division.

Among jurisdictions countywide, Spring Valley’s serious crime rate of 20.93 per 1,000 residents was was below the county average 24.65 per 1,000 residents. It was also an 11 percent reduction since 2006, when the rate was 29.15 per 1,000 residents. These results reflected an overall countywide trend toward decline in such offenses.

In fact, SANDAG said: “In 2010, both the violent and property crime rates for the San Diego region decreased and were at new 30-year lows. . . . Compared to the U.S. overall, the San Diego region had lower violent and property crime rates in 2009 (the most recent year national statistics are available).”

The 67 homicides in San Diego County in 2010 represented a 76 percent drop since 1991.  And “despite concerns that the economic downturn would result in more property crime, the number of burglaries and larcenies were at 30-year lows,” SANDAG said.

In raw numbers, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, which oversees Spring Valley, in 2010 reported 16 rapes, 98 robberies, 224 aggravated assaults, 325 total burglaries (both residential and commercial) 345 stolen vehicles, 556 total cases of larceny, and no cases of arson.