3 Largest Cities Had Increases in Crime : Statistics: The FBI says Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley could be displaced as the nation’s safest municipalities with 100,000 or more residents.

Jolted by surges in robbery, assault and theft, Ventura County’s three largest cities experienced crime increases during the first half of 1992, the FBI reported Monday.

Serious crime jumped 10% in Oxnard, 7.3% in Simi Valley and 3.3% in Thousand Oaks for the six months ending in June, even as crime fell 2% nationwide, the report said.

Though still one of the safest urban counties in the West, the new report indicates that Ventura County is headed for a crime increase for the third straight year. By contrast, crime fell countywide during the 1980s.

Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley also will be dislodged as the nation’s safest cities with 100,000 residents or more if six-month trends continue for the rest of the year.

Two small suburban cities, Santa Clarita in Los Angeles County and Amherst Town in upstate New York, had slightly lower midyear crime rates, an analysis of FBI statistics shows.

The new study includes statistics only for cities whose populations exceed 100,000. Of the 195 cities of that size, 184 reported.

Crimes included in the FBI Crime Index are murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, vehicle theft and arson.

In Ventura County, raw figures showed that crimes of violence--especially robberies and aggravated assaults--were up most sharply: 30% in Thousand Oaks, 22% in Oxnard and 16% in Simi Valley.

“I never like to see an increase in violent crime. That means people are getting hurt,” said Simi Valley Police Chief Lindsey P. Miller. “But everything has to be kept in perspective. Compared to everybody else, we’re still in pretty good shape.”

That is true for Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, where the crime rates are about two-thirds of the California average, but less so for Oxnard, where crimes per person exceed the statewide norm.

Thousand Oaks reported 1,739 crimes from January through July, about 16 offenses for every 1,000 residents. Simi Valley reported 1,774 crimes, or 17 per 1,000. And Oxnard reported 5,190 crimes, about 35 per 1,000.

The Oxnard figures reflect a jump of 473 crimes compared with the same six months in 1991. Particularly striking is the 43% jump in robberies, from 226 to 324.

Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt could not be reached for comment.

But Oxnard police said last spring that a 91% increase in that city’s violent crimes in 1990-91 was caused mainly by an increase in gang activity, a growing drug problem and criminals moving in from Los Angeles.

Oxnard has accounted for about 46% of Ventura County’s violent crime over the last two years.

Both Simi Valley’s Miller and Assistant Sheriff Oscar L. Fuller, whose department patrols Thousand Oaks, said crime may be up because the bad economy has made more people desperate.

But both said that Los Angeles criminals, lured by the prosperity of the white-collar east county, might also have helped spur the increase.

“We’ve had episodes where folks would come up from Los Angeles and make a raid on us,” Fuller said. “We’re always going to be relatively attractive because that end of the county is affluent, and it’s attractive to folks just over the hill looking for places to prey on.”

However, Simi Valley crime analyst Debbie Ruud said that a spate of robberies early this year illustrated how a single criminal--regardless of origin--could alter statistics.

Simi Valley has had a 31% robbery increase this year. But two-thirds of the 11-robbery increase is attributable to one man, dubbed “the pizza bandit,” because he has robbed only pizza parlors, Ruud said.

An influx of new residents into overcrowded rental housing in the east county is also slowly taking a toll, Fuller said.

“Thousand Oaks is changing,” Fuller said. “There’s more density in population there now. And that tends to bring more people into the area that may be coming in with a different set of values and attitudes.”