Crime rising in Sonoma County

Nearly every day in 2014, someone broke into a Santa Rosa residence.

Petaluma police investigated about 20 shoplifting reports each month. Every five days, a vehicle was stolen in Rohnert Park and Windsor police investigated an aggravated assault.

Statistics released by the state Attorney General’s Office last week offer a snapshot of criminal activity in Sonoma County, where crime rose slightly in 2014 following a notable drop the preceding year.

There were 8,583 property crimes reported across Sonoma County last year, an increase of 4.4 percent from 2013. Violent crimes increased 2.2 percent, to 1,821 incidents, despite a decline in some cities like Windsor and Rohnert Park.

Statewide, nearly all serious crimes dropped in both number and rate per 100,000 people between 2013 and 2014, according to the state Attorney General’s Office. The homicide rate fell ?4.3 percent, and the rate of robbery dropped 10 percent.

The exception across California was the rate of aggravated assault, which increased 2.4 percent in 2014. It’s a prevalent type of violence committed in Sonoma County, where three to four assaults are reported each day.

Aggravated assault is a serious violent offense, defined by the FBI as an attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe bodily injury. Countywide statistics show that about 45 percent of such assaults involve “fists, hands or feet,” approximately 14 percent involve knives or another cutting instrument and just under 8 percent involve firearms. The remaining 33 percent involve an “other weapon.”

Gang participation played a role in about 13.5 percent of felony aggravated assaults investigated by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, Sgt. Cecile Focha said. Assaults rose 5 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to Sheriff’s Office statistics.

Gang activity was a factor in 7 percent of all reports taken across all categories of crimes and nearly 30 percent of all crimes involving weapons, Focha said.

The rise in crime from 2013 to 2014 is a blip compared to the 20-year backdrop of crimes plummeting despite population increases. Also, 2013 was an unusually low crime year in Sonoma County apart from homicides, of which there were nine, according to Justice Department statistics.

Over the last 10 years, 82 people have been killed in crimes amounting to homicide in Sonoma County, or an average of eight people per year.

Vehicle theft has been on the rise in Sonoma County since 2011. More than two vehicles went missing each day in Sonoma County in 2014, when 840 vehicles were stolen, compared to 602 in 2011, according to Justice Department stats.

Those numbers differ from data provided by the Sonoma County Auto Theft Task Force, which reported 895 stolen vehicles in 2014, part of a steady increase in such thefts since 2013.

The number of reported rapes also appears to be higher - with 172 cases in 2014 compared to 126 cases in 2013. It’s unclear how that 37 percent increase was influenced by an expanded definition of rape, which took effect at the start of 2014 and now includes men among victims.

The data paints a detailed portrait of crime in each city.

In Santa Rosa, violent crimes rose 18 percent last year, but still remain 38 percent lower than levels from a decade ago. There were 70 robberies, aggravated assaults and rapes last year, up from 42 in 2013. Of all robberies last year, 22 percent involved firearms and nearly 14 percent took place at a residence.

Property crimes rose 10 percent in Santa Rosa, fueled by an increase in stolen cars, theft from cars, shoplifting and other types of property crimes.

“We have been really busy and (the increase) doesn’t surprise me,” said Sgt. Josh Ludtke, who runs the Santa Rosa Police Department’s property crimes team.

Identity theft crimes also represent an increasing portion of his unit’s time.

Ludtke and other local law enforcement officials said some of the increase in property crimes is likely due to realignment of the state prison system, which transferred some nonviolent offenders to county supervision and put them back on the streets. He and others said that Proposition 47, a measure that downgraded some nonviolent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors last November, could bring an additional increase in property crimes this year by reducing sentences for those types of crimes.

In Petaluma, property crimes have risen 31 percent between 2012 and 2014.

“We’re attributing that (increase) to realignment,” Petaluma Police Lt. Ken Savano said.

The frequency of robbery in Petaluma has remained fairly stable over the last 10 years, with a person being robbed about twice a month on average.

“The concern from residents is the property crimes, theft from homes and autos, theft from businesses,” Savano said.

Like Petaluma, a robbery was reported about twice a month last year, but in contrast a gun was used in about one-third of robberies in Rohnert Park and only one-eighth of Petaluma robberies.

Property crimes in Rohnert Park rose 7 percent in 2014 compared to the year before. Violent crime dropped 11 percent from 2013 to 2014, and decreased 42 percent between 2005 and 2014.

Aggravated assault continued an overall decline in Rohnert Park, with assaults being reported about twice a week in 2014, down from four to five times a week in 2005. Rarely do those crimes involve firearms. For example, 10 out of 119 aggravated assaults involved guns in 2014, while 63 involved “hands fists or feet,” according to the justice department.

The Justice Department collects crime data from the following agencies operating in Sonoma County: Cloverdale, Cotati, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa Junior College, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Sonoma State University and Windsor police departments as well as the CHP, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, State Parks and Union Pacific Railroad.

The full data set can be found in an interactive database on the Attorney General’s website at http://oag.ca.gov/crime/cjsc/criminal-justice-profiles.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.