Crime rates and trends in the city of Santa Clarita are looking fairly similar to numbers from last year, according to Capt. Justin Diez of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station.  During a special meeting Friday morning at City Hall with the Santa Clarita City Council Public Safety Committee, which is made up of Mayor Pro Tem Bill Miranda and Councilman Jason Gibbs, along with City Manager Ken Striplin, other city officials and a couple members of the public, Diez gave specific crime numbers as they related to numbers from last year to date.  “Overall,” Diez said, “city crime is up 3%, county crime is down 3% — a little more than 3%. So, ultimately, if we add the city and the county for the entire Santa Clarita Valley, we’re up 43 crimes over last year.”  However, at the rate these numbers are coming in each month, if they continue that way for the next three months, “it would,” he said, “basically put us on par for last year.”  Diez spoke about Part-1 crimes, which include homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, grand theft auto, arson and larceny theft, which Diez said makes up most of the theft in Santa Clarita.  Part-1 crimes are “what’s given to the FBI once a year,” he said, “and then when the FBI comes up with their uniform crime reports — they’re called UCRs — that’s when you’ll see they’ll come out and they’ll say, you know, ‘This city’s safe’ or ‘This county’s safe’ or ‘This state is safe.’”  Diez clarified that the numbers he reported on Friday were not hard numbers, rather preliminary data. The hard numbers, he said, won’t go into effect until Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna posts them on the LASD Transparency Promise website. Diez added that the numbers he was reporting were tracked to date on Friday.  Diez listed two homicides for the year, down two from the previous year.   Rape, he said, is also down, with 27 rapes recorded last year compared to 14 of them recorded this year.   Robberies are down 30%. Last year, 93 robberies were recorded, Diez said, compared to this year, when there were 66 of them recorded.   Aggravated assault is up. Diez said these incidents are typically domestic violence cases and cases that often involve sibling-on-sibling violence between adult siblings living at home with their parents. There were 152 cases of aggravated assault last year compared to 171 cases this year.   According to Diez, burglaries are also up, going from 302 cases last year to 324 this year. Many of the burglaries reported, he said, target the master bedrooms of two-story homes along hillsides or golf courses.  “They’re only looking for cash and jewelry — non-traceable cash and jewelry,” Diez said. “Obviously, guns and electronics can be traced. They won’t ransack the house. They’ll go straight there and they’ll leave.”  Grand theft auto, which Diez said was the city’s highest category for property crime, went from 254 cases last year to 321 cases this year. He mentioned that some years back, Toyotas and Hondas were among the top vehicles stolen.  “You didn’t even need a regular key,” he said. “If it was just kind of a basic Honda key, it would still fit in there from all the years the key going in and out, the little tumblers that get worn out, and they were so easy to steal.”  But now, he said, Chevy, GMC, Mercedes and Kia automobiles are big targets.  “They (thieves) will test-drive a car, or get a car as a loaner, they’ll clone the key FOB, and then go back and steal it,” Diez said. “When would you ever hear of a Mercedes being stolen prior? Because they had the key FOBs that prevented them from getting stolen. But now they can clone them. So, Kias, Mercedes, GM, GMCs, Corvettes are very big. Our local dealerships have quite a few Corvettes stolen right off the lot.”  Arson, Diez said, is a number that’s down this year, going from 19 last year to 12 this year.   “Typically,” he added, “our arsons are from transients in the wash, and it happens one of two ways: when it gets cold, they’re trying to stay warm, or they’re mentally ill, and they like fire.”  One particular area of concern during Friday’s meeting was the recent trend of fights reported after football games at In-N-Out Burger on Bouquet Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. Diez ensured the public safety committee that sheriff’s deputies would show a presence at the location on Friday nights for the remainder of the football season, adding that the Sheriff’s Department also communicated with representatives at Lowe’s, the home improvement store that shares the parking lot with In-N-Out, to keep parking lot lights on at night. The Lowe’s parking lot lights, he said, are normally off late at night when these fights were taking place.  The meeting ended with discussion about the city strategically installing 35 automated license plate-reading cameras throughout the city that will alert local law enforcement agencies of a stolen vehicle. Striplin said the goal is to have the cameras installed by the end of the year.  The post Crime rates and trends looking similar to last year, Capt. Diez says  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.