Crime Rate Falls 7%, Murders 13%, Lungren Reports

SACRAMENTO — In a wide-ranging public safety speech, Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren announced Wednesday that the crime rate in California fell almost 7% during the first nine months of 1994, including a 13% plunge in murders.

When figures for the full year are in, they are expected to show the third consecutive year of decline in the overall crime rate and the first decline since 1988 in the homicide rate, the state Department of Justice reported.

Lungren credited the reduction to a combination of events, including expansion of the prison system, tougher sentences, renewed public confidence in police and a fear among criminals of the new “three strikes and you’re out” law.

In his speech, Lungren also denounced the “trash talk” of professional athletes and talk shows as disrespectful and reflecting the “underpinnings of gang society.” He also proposed lengthening sentences of convicts who engage in disruptive but not necessarily illegal behavior in prison and of penalizing inmates who repeatedly file frivolous lawsuits.

The two-term Republican attorney general, a potential 1998 candidate for governor, spoke in his annual State of Public Safety address to the Sacramento Comstock Club, a group that primarily consists of business executives.

The reduced crime rate figures are based on a survey of 52 police and sheriffs’ departments in large and medium-size population centers for the first nine months of last year compared with the same period in 1993. The survey included Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco and Sacramento. Final figures for the entire year are expected in March.

The compilation showed that overall crime was down 6.7%. Its components included these reductions: homicides down by 13%; forcible rape, 5.5%; robbery, 12.4%; aggravated assault, 0.7%; burglary, 7.4%, and auto theft, 6.5%. There were 2,046 homicides in the first nine months of 1993, compared to 1,781 in 1994.

Lungren’s aides said the last decline in the state’s homicide rate was in 1988, when it fell 0.2%.

Mentioning a number of factors, Lungren told reporters there had been a renewal of public confidence in law enforcement after the initial retreat of police during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

“I think (the retreat) caused some people to not be as willing to participate with law enforcement,” Lungren said.

He said that although the new “three strikes” law has not taken full effect, public discussion of its severe consequences may already have discouraged criminal activity.

“All the discussion sent a very clear message to the criminal community . . . that we are getting serious,” Lungren said.

In his speech, Lungren cited a national “crisis in values” that threatens families, erodes personal responsibility and breeds disrespect for the law and other people.

“We have created a trash-talk society which manifests itself not only in sports, but in our politics, on television through tabloid talk shows and in the way we treat one another,” he said. “It’s time to strive for something better.”

“Anybody who goes to an NBA game knows what I’m talking about,” Lungren told reporters later. “Instead of enjoying the fact that you scored a basket, you turn and you ridicule your opponent. . . . You destroy the person you are competing with psychologically.”

“It is a very, very negative type of behavior,” Lungren said. “I think it reflects the underpinnings of the gang society” in which low-achieving individuals seek higher self-esteem “only by destroying somebody else.”

In an effort to restrict the filing of costly frivolous lawsuits against the state, which he said cost taxpayers $9 million last year, Lungren said he will propose a bill that would deduct good-time credits from the sentences of convicts “when they abuse the legal process.” He said that details of the measure are being drafted, and that Arizona already has such a law.

He also said he is considering a bill that would extend a convict’s term for breaking the rules in prison.

Press secretary Dave Puglia said offenses that might result in additional time behind bars could include “disruptive behavior, shouting at a guard, or possession of a kitchen utensil in a cell.” He said Michigan and Illinois have enacted such laws.