Crime & Safety
'Safe City' Sees Public Nudity, Bomb Scare
Despite having its share of weird and funny crime reports, Aliso Viejo still remains one of the safest cities in Orange County.
Despite an array of strange and off-beat crimes, Aliso Viejo ranks among the top five safest cities in Orange County.
The city, which was incorporated in 2001, is also the county’s youngest city — seeing a 19.1 percent population growth to just shy of 48,000 residents, according to the 2010 census. While it has increasingly grown, Aliso Viejo’s crime rate, especially those deemed violent, remain low.
“We haven’t had a homicide report in years,” said Orange County Sheriff Department Sgt. D.J. Haldeman, adding that the last murder case in the city was on New Year’s Day 2007 during a bar brawl at Time Out Tavern.
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The department, which received 12,261 emergency calls to dispatch in 2011 alone credits the overall low crime to community education.
“The majority in reduction in crime has to do with community education on prevention of becoming a crime victim,” Haldeman said. “Our volunteer police services also help patrol around the city and keep an eye on crime.”
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The city still handles a handful of assaults, rapes, robberies and arson reports, among other crimes annually. Burglary and theft make up the bulk of the crimes, with 87 burglary and 324 theft reports made in 2010 alone, according to City-data.com. Overall, the city is well below the U.S. crime averages.
“A few years back we saw the number of open-door, theft spike,” Haldeman said. “We were like holy cow this is a big problem we are having so we started an education campaign about two years ago called “Remove It Or Loose It” where we go into certain neighborhoods where we see these thefts and we educate people to remove or hide their belongings and making sure their door’s are locked.”
The response was amazing, said Haldeman. Theft reports dropped massively during the last few years, even with the city operating with the same number of police force.
Much like it’s neighboring cities, Aliso Viejo does receive interesting crime reports from its residents, some of which are funny and weird in nature, like reports of screaming children, naked people and general shenanigans.
For Haldeman, one of the most memorable calls was the bomb scare that created a fuss a few years back. It turned out to be a battery.
