Following up on the post about why we don’t seem to have any meaningful local bus routes, this is another post looking for something missing that everyone feels like should be there: if our crime statistics are relatively stable, why do we still feel unsafe in Costa Mesa?

Other than aggravated assaults, which are way up since the pandemic, the trends for crime reported by the Costa Mesa Police Department using the Uniform Crime Reporting System (UCR) have been relatively stable. Yet residents routinely list public safety as one of their top issues. So are residents hallucinating? Probably not: while the UCR is useful for spotting trends, it is a terrible measure of actual crime that is occurring in any particular city.

UCR Statistics: Incomplete, Manipulable, Imprecise

There are at least three problems with claiming the UCR system is an accurate measure of actual overall crime. First of all, to be recorded by UCR, the crime has to be reported. The National Crime Victimization Survey, which uses household surveys to try and fill in the gap caused by under-reporting to the police, routinely estimates that more than 50% of violent crimes and almost 70% of property crimes are not reported, meaning they will never show up in the UCR statistics. Second, even if a crime is reported to the police, the police have to decide to make a report for the crime to be recorded. Police have wide discretion in recording criminal activity and I’ve definitely been discouraged by police officers from pressing charges or filing a report if the likelihood of investigation or recovery was low. And finally, when a perpetrator has committed multiple crimes, only the most severe crime will show up in the UCR. So a catalytic converter thief that gets caught in the act and clocks the good Samaritan in the head with her wrench will get logged as an aggravated assault or an attempted murder, but the grand theft will go unrecorded.

So even if the UCR stats can make a city look “safe” on paper, it is entirely possible that residents are still under siege. But if UCR statistics are so problematic, how can we get a handle on what crime actually looks like in our city?

One way is to look at crimes that are reported to UCR that are very unlikely to be under-reported or that are difficult for the police to overlook. For example, UCR murder counts are generally considered to be more accurate than UCR theft or vandalism statistics simply because dead bodies are hard to ignore. Grand theft auto is also very likely to be reported and investigated. As I noted in my earlier write up, while murders were relatively stable (and thankfully still very rare), grand theft auto has increased about 30% from pre-pandemic levels and only slightly ticked down in 2022. If grand theft auto is a relatively accurate proxy of overall crime that isn’t a good sign.

But both murder and grand theft auto are serious felonies, and it’s questionable whether they are good indicators for lower level crimes that more seriously impact quality of life, such as drug abuse, retail theft and vandalism. So I think I have another, relatively accurate proxy measure for crime in Costa Mesa, one which the authorities have an incentive to record accurately and that people will definitely notice. And that’s copper wire theft.

Copper Wire Theft – A Better Proxy for Crime Rates?

I first started hearing rumblings of copper wire theft becoming a problem for Costa Mesa last Fall while attending one of the Finance and Pension Advisory Committee (FiPAC) meetings. At the meeting, Committee Member Ralph Taboada, a long-time Costa Mesa resident and super-participant in city affairs (he also chairs the Active Transportation Committee and is a board member of the Costa Mesa Alliance for Better Streets), alerted the FiPAC that he had noticed many of the lights along the Harbor Boulevard multiuse path had gone out. He had spoken to the CMPD about the issue and they had reported to him that the cause was copper wire thieves.

Then, more recently, the Los Angeles Times ran a startling headline: “LA is being stripped for parts,” it blared, and the related story is equally galling. The City of Los Angeles estimates that copper wire theft has cost the city at least $17 million in repair costs in 2023 alone. And not only does such theft steal from the public coffers, it also poses a public safety risk. As FiPAC Committee Member Taboada noted, a multiuse path without adequate lighting can lead to accidents or, worse, attract crime and other anti-social behaviors.

In other words, the City of Costa Mesa is well positioned to keep track of reports of copper wire theft, and residents are very likely to notice and report if critical infrastructure such as street lights or traffic signals are out. Additionally, copper wire theft is a brazen and desperate act; it requires working out in the open (public infrastructure is, by its nature, public) and the possibility of electrocution is ever present. While the incentive to commit such thefts will of course be tied to the fluctuating price copper commands on the black market, it is reasonably akin to other drug and poverty fueled crimes, such as shoplifting, bike theft and porch pirating, or at least more so than murder or car theft. These factors lead me to conclude that tracking such thefts would be a better barometer for the prevalence of quality of life crimes than the problematic UCR.

So how is copper wire theft looking in Costa Mesa?

Well, not counting the observations of Committee Member Taboada, there are signs that copper wire thefts are up.

News stories featuring such thefts are percolating up to the local Orange County media. There was the story about a thief being killed on the 55 Freeway in Tustin has he fled the scene of a copper wire theft. There was another story about thieves pilfering wire from Anaheim street lights. And another set of thieves were caught after they stole copper wire from, of all places, a building in the Great Park in Irvine (so much for the idea Irvine is immune to such things). And those were just from this past Fall.

But as for local statistics, we’re pretty much in the dark. As far as I know there hasn’t been any reporting on the problem from either the CMPD or Public Works to the City Council. There was allegedly a report to the Costa Mesa City/Districts Liaison Meeting last Friday on copper wire thefts, so clearly it is starting to be discussed at the highest levels across the many governmental agencies that govern Costa Mesa (if you want a run down of what those are, head over to the Informed Resident Toolkit). Unfortunately nothing about that report has been posted publicly. I wasn’t able to attend the Friday meeting — mom duty calls and 8:00am “public” meetings are for the birds — so hopefully there will be a report posted in the minutes when those are available.

But really, it’s the City that should disclose what is going on and whether this is a real issue, and if so, what the City plans to do about it. If thieves are wrecking our public infrastructure, which is maintained at great expense by the taxpayer, I think residents have a right to know. And equally, if copper wire theft is a good proxy for all kinds of petty crimes occurring all over the city but aren’t being reported, I think the City better have a good answer for how it plans to address that, too. But let’s start with figuring out the magnitude of the problem and how much time and money the city is losing cleaning it up.

Hopefully these kinds of questions will come up in the joint Town Hall Meeting this evening at Sonora Elementary School at 6:30pm tonight, where Mayor John Stephens, Police Chief Ron Lawrence, OC Supervisor Katrina Foley and NMUSD Supervisor Wes Smith will all be in attendance. Unfortunately the event awkwardly coincides with the virtual version of the second Fairview Developmental Center Public Workshop, which is also scheduled for the same time tonight. But if you are conflicted, go to the townhall meeting. I’m pretty sure these FDC workshops are a waste of time.