By Olivia Madera
For fifty years, the City of Oxnard has participated in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program by contributing data under their traditional Summary Reporting System.
When the FBI retired the SRS, they introduced the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the Oxnard Police Department started reporting NIBRS-compliant crime data on November 15, 2022. Because of this, the California Department of Justice requirements that are specific to California through the California Incident-Based Reporting System were met.
According to the news release, the NIBRS shifts the way the OPD reports crime. It captures incident-specific details, including information on victims, known offenders, relationships between victims and offenders, arrestees, property, and drugs involved in crimes.
The news release said this transition gives the OPD context to specific public safety problems and the ability to provide more detailed, accurate, and meaningful information about crime. However, the report said the differences between the NIBRS and the CIBRS have affected the overall crime amounts in Oxnard compared to previous years.
The biggest differences of the NIBRS are that it will allow more offenses to be reported per incident, more types of offenses will be collected, and more crime categories will be categorized.
On February 23, 2024, Chief of Police Jason Benites prepared Oxnard’s 2023 Uniform Crime Reporting Data in the form of a news release and supplemental report.
The data collected displayed that there were 9,874 Group A Offenses in 2023. These offenses were categorized as crimes against persons, crimes against property, and crimes against society. There was a total of 2,340 crimes against persons, 5,473 crimes against property and 2,061 crimes against society.
Of the total crimes against persons there were 13 homicide crimes, seven murder crimes, three negligent manslaughter crimes, three justifiable homicides, 196 rape and sexual assault crimes, 89 fondling crimes, 2,083 assault crimes, 846 aggravated assault crimes, 1,098 simple assault crimes, 139 intimidation crimes, 34 kidnaping and obduction crimes,14 sex offenses such as incest or statutory rape, and zero human trafficking crimes.
According to the data in the supplemental report there was a total of seven murders in 2023 with one of the seven homicides being gang-related, five involving a firearm and two involving a knife. In 2022, there were nine cases of murder reported and zero negligent manslaughter and justifiable homicide crimes. Since 2022-2023 there has been a -22% decrease in murder crimes in the City of Oxnard.
In 2023, the City of Oxnard saw a 28.9% intake of rape crimes with a total of 107 rape crimes reported. In total, out of the 196 rape and sexual assault cases 70.9% (139 out of 196 offenses) were victim-offender relationships with family, domestic, or acquaintance-related.
In the same year it was reported that there was also a 9.2% increase in rape offenses per incident. 14 consensual sex offenses were also defined as “nonforcible sexual intercourse with a person who is under the statutory age of consent” in 2023.
For aggravated assault offenses, there were 513 aggravated assaults in 2022, however, simple assault and intimidation are additional offenses that were not previously reportable under the SRS. Under the NIBRS, the definition of assault was adjusted to include a broader set of offenses that were previously reported as aggravated assault under the SRS.
Due to this, there is no comparison provided for assault offenses in 2022. An estimate of 748 aggravated assault crimes was generated for 2022 based on the 2023 NIBRS definition.
The adjusted estimation, the news release said, was based on unverified data and is only an approximation. Therefore, only 734 total offenses were reported in 2022.
In 2023, the data reflected 846 aggravated assaults, 1,098 simple assault offenses, and 139 intimidation offenses totaling up to a 2,342 sum of assault and robbery offenses. The data revealed that there was no comparison between 2022 and 2023 for crimes against society.
Among the data, there was also 1,755 drug and narcotic offenses, 1,197 drug and narcotic violations and 558 drug equipment violations.
According to the supplemental report, 2023 was the first full year that used the NIBRS crime data for the City of Oxnard making it hard to compare 2023’s numbers with prior years that used the SRS data. For 2023, crime in similar categories proved to remain lower than in seven of the last 10 years of reported UCR crimes.