As you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m a big fan of cities. That’s not to say suburbia and rural America don’t have their charms — I’m a North Carolina country girl at heart — but I believe that cities are the nation’s growth engines. We’re much better off if our cities are humming, and making our cities work should be very high on our priority list.

So I would definitely describe myself as an “urbanist”. But one thing urbanists often stumble on is the very apt critique that increased urbanization is strongly associated with increased crime. So although this blog will mostly focus on housing, transportation and parks, it would be remiss to completely ignore the fourth “leg” of the municipal policy stool that is public safety. Without people feeling safe on the street, in their homes and in public spaces, the work of the city grinds to a halt and it becomes a miserable place to live.

This is why I put down increased reporting from our police department as one of the things I’m wishing for Costa Mesa in 2024. Unlike the park rangers, who provide a reasonably detailed report of citations issued in our city parks to the Parks and Community Services Commission on (more or less) a bimonthly basis, the Costa Mesa Police Department does not provide monthly or even yearly reports of our crime statistics to the City Council. Rather, it only posts its reported crime statistics on the CMPD website, and you really have to know where to look to find them.

And it turns out that the CMPD just updated its statistics website with the 2022 numbers (and, as of this writing, I understand the 2023 numbers are forthcoming). So without further ado, let’s dive into the stats.

The big ticket items: not as bad as you would expect, but aggravated assaults are way up

First, the good news: the really big line items, like homicide, rape and arson, are all holding steady at well under 100 incidents per year for the period of 2015-2022. Additionally, it is noteworthy that burglary was significantly down in 2022 compared to 2015 (though trending slightly upward in the past four years), as was motor vehicle theft. Even robbery, which should pick up the kinds of smash-and-grabs that have ticked up statewide in recent years, look pretty flat to me.

But wowza, that aggravated assault trend. Yeeesh. A 100%+ increase from 2019 is pretty bad.

I guess one way to look at it is that Costa Mesa isn’t alone in struggling with aggravated assault; not only are incidents up both statewide and countywide, the California statistics are diverging in a bad way from the national trend. Everywhere else in America, aggravated assault ticked up during the COVID-19 pandemic year of 2020 and then started trending downward again; here in California, aggravated assaults have kept rising.

The fact that this statistic is trending up both statewide and countywide suggests there may not be something specifically wrong with Costa Mesa’s policing approach. But that doesn’t mean that the City shouldn’t respond to it. It would be helpful for the City Council to take notice of this trend and work with the CMPD to investigate. Are these aggravated assaults geographically localized? Happening at a certain time of day? Associated with a specific factor (drinking/drugs, homelessness, firearms, etc.)? Without more information it’s hard to say how the City can improve.

The “small ticket” items: broken windows and the perception of crime

The CMPD also provides data going back to 2018 for “smaller” offenses, which include white collar crimes like forgeries and fraud but also more petty offenses like vandalism, DUIs, drug possession and vagrancy. While each of these categories are important to address on their own terms, I’ve grouped a handful of them together under the banner of “quality of life” crimes. I use this term because these kinds of crimes may significantly impact the perception of crime, which in turn feeds into residents’ estimates of their quality of life.

So how are we doing?

The first thing that jumps out is the big increase in drug abuse violations from 2019 to 2021, which I suspect is related to the fentanyl crisis that has been ripping through Orange County. I also spot a secular upward trend in “other assaults” which tracks onto the increase in aggravated assaults discussed above.

But I would also highlight two other troubling upward trends: first, the big spike in DUIs from 2020 to 2021, and second, the upward drift of vandalism.

The uptick in DUIs not only tracks the fentanyl issues we’ve been having, but it also seems vaguely correlated with the opening of a number of cannabis retail stores in the City. However, the timing doesn’t quite line up: the first cannabis retail stores weren’t approved until 2022, and clearly the DUI trend predated those stores by two years. But just to check, it would be nice if the CMPD could provide some color on our DUIs. Are they mostly alcohol related? Fentanyl? Cannabis? Something else? We do have an awful lot of bars in the area and we, along with pretty much every other city in America, mandate free parking be provided at every one of them. Just something to think about if parking minimums are addressed later this year.

The increase in vandalism is troublesome because it is a quintessential “broken windows” issue. Vandalism is a clear, persistent example of lawlessness and, if it isn’t addressed quickly, it can make a neighborhood feel chaotic and dangerous (even if the violent crime data doesn’t bear this out). Recently, a number of residents from the Westside came to City Council to complain of graffiti and other acts of property damage in their alleys, so anecdotal evidence suggests this trend has continued into 2023.

The City Council and the CMPD should step up and aggressively address both DUIs and vandalism. When residents see drivers driving recklessly and seemingly without consequence, and graffiti and other kinds of vandalism seem widespread, it is easy to believe that crime overall has increased. So how can we address these trends? Increased enforcement clearly has to be part of the picture, but perhaps there are some passive solutions as well. As mentioned above, imposing greater costs on drinking (either through paid parking, through increases in alcohol taxes, or imposing dramshop liability) has been statistically correlated with lower rates of drunk driving, assuming alcohol is the problem. And better street infrastructure that reduces vehicle speeds without relying on congestion to slow down cars, as congestion is often absent after hours, can help reduce the severity of DUI-related crashes.

As for vandalism? Well, I’m a firm believer in Jane Jacobs’s theory about “eyes on the street”: a street watched over by its residents through active use is a safer street than one that feels deserted. In that vein, reforms like Councilperson Manuel Chavez’s suggestion that the CMPD look into improving alley lighting are heading in exactly the right direction. Hopefully we’ll hear more about those kinds of policies in 2024.