Encroaching Violence Stirs Fear in Simi Valley : Crime: Recent episodes, including the slaying of a policeman, raise concerns among residents that the city’s shield of safety is eroding.

SIMI VALLEY —  The mountains ringing Simi Valley have long seemed like a stout breakwater that keeps violent crime in Los Angeles from washing over into one of the safest cities in the United States.

For some, it will always be that way.

But last week, many residents said the shield seems to be cracking.

With the slaying of Officer Michael Clark, the murder of two young children by their suicidal father and persistent gang problems in some neighborhoods, residents said, one of their worst fears has become reality:

Violence is coming to Simi Valley.

“It’s kind of like a plague, see, it’s like a disease,” said Mike Crone, 27. “It’s just a matter of time before everything from the [San Fernando] Valley moves out here. It’ll take 20 or 30 years, but you’re already starting to see the gangs.”

Joe Blinn had to fend off would-be muggers with a concealed handgun.

Roxann Barr’s mailbox has been blown to pieces by vandals’ fireworks.

And Guatemala native Elizabeth Acosta and her husband are seriously considering pulling their three kids out of the city they have loved for the past 15 years--because the streets are too dangerous.

“In the beginning it was very quiet here, but it changed a lot,” said Acosta, 33, a nurse’s aide. “We’re thinking of moving ‘cause this is just getting to be too much. . . . It’s in the news all the time now.”

Another resident who gave her name only as Barbara said, “I love this little town. I hate to see this happening.”

Barbara and others see violent crime in Simi Valley, with a population of just more than 100,000, as the obvious product of people migrating from the more crime-ridden San Fernando Valley.

“Ventura County isn’t immune,” said Blinn, a securities salesman who moved from West Los Angeles to Simi Valley eight years ago. “I have no reason to believe that Simi Valley is going to be insulated.”

When three surly teen-agers confronted him on Larch Street two years ago and “made gestures as if they were going to liberate me from my wallet,” Blinn said, he had to draw the unlicensed handgun he carries and chase them off. And his neighborhood’s walls have been scarred with a recent rash of graffiti, he said.

Blinn, 54, said his ducktailed teen-rebel days of the 1950s were a far cry from the attitudes teen-agers wield today.

“It’s different now. These kids don’t have any inhibitions. They’re not afraid; they’re fearless,” he said. “The X-generations don’t have the conscience I had when I was growing up. They seem mad.”

Blinn’s neighbors shared his belief that heedless youth are bringing more crime--and violence--to Simi Valley.

“I think there’s a rise in trouble,” said Judy Shepherd, 49, who runs a home day-care center. “You see an awful lot of graffiti, an awful lot of these children walking around in gangs in their sloppy clothes and their shaved heads and their attitudes.”

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Shepherd said she worries about the classmates her daughter will have when she starts sixth grade this fall.

Kelly Godin, an office manager, said she saw violence growing in Simi long before Larry Sasse’s murder-suicide and the Clark slaying.

“I think it’ll get worse, but just gradually, like anyplace,” said Godin, 25. “It’s going to spread up from Los Angeles, like a circle.”

At first, she just worried about car burglaries in her neighborhood, but then the liquor store across the street was hit recently by drive-by gunfire. “I’m just glad I’m not a kid,” said Godin. “I wouldn’t want to bring up a kid in this.”

But some--including longtime Simi residents--see this as just a lot of alarmist talk.

“I think we’re isolated to a lot of the violence that goes on in L.A. and Oxnard,” said Kim Baker, 39, a political science student and mother of four who has lived in Simi Valley for nine years.

After learning of Officer Clark’s death, Baker said, shaking her head in disbelief, a friend of hers scrapped plans to settle in Simi Valley.

Clark’s death “is an absolute tragedy,” Baker said, “but I think you can have insanity wherever you go.”

Compared to the San Fernando Valley, Simi Valley is an oasis of calm, said Ed Lee, a recent arrival.

Gunshots on Lee’s block in Reseda woke him several times last year.

Now, Lee said, he feels comfortable letting his 13-year-old daughter walk through his neighborhood at night.

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Recent violent crimes are “isolated incidents,” he said.

“I don’t see people cutting people off [on the freeway] and all the stuff that goes on on the other side of the hill,” Lee said, revving up his weed trimmer with a tranquil smile. “It’s like this all the time. . . . It’s a lot more peaceful.”

But some who moved to Simi Valley believing they could escape violence permanently have grown disillusioned.

Mortgage broker Tim Rex plans to move out.

“The bigger Simi Valley gets, the worse the crime’s going to get,” said Rex, 37, a stepfather and 15-year Simi resident. “I’ve got six years more until my house is paid off, and I’m adios. This place is not safe, and it’s getting worse.”

Housewife Roxann Barr said she may leave, too.

Four years ago, Barr said, her husband moved their family to Simi Valley to escape crime in the San Fernando Valley and to make good on an old promise to give her the “dollhouse” she’d always wanted.

The couple frosted their peaked roof with carved white trim.

They bracketed the house with flowering vines on crisp, white trellises, filled the yard with fruit trees. And they accented it all with carved and hand-painted animals, right down to a mailbox shaped like a carousel horse.

“Simi Valley seemed like a breath of fresh air,” said Barr, 44.

Then, vandals cut their Christmas light wires, tossed a hand-made donkey statue into a nearby wash and then on July 4--for the second time--blew the mailbox to bits.

At one point, she received a police flyer warning that a neighbor had been robbed by someone posing as a cleaning worker, she said.

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Robbery and vandalism are too close to physical violence, Barr said. Now she is battling with her husband to leave Simi Valley.

“If they would destroy somebody else’s property, they don’t know the value of life,” she said. “You can’t have something nice. Isn’t that sad?”

But some residents of this ever-growing city say they are resigned to the fact that an increase in population inevitably brings a rise in violent crime.

And as crime spreads out from the Los Angeles city core, Simi Valley residents must either stand their ground and work to keep violent crime from getting too strong a grip--or keep moving further into the hinterlands.

Violent crime “is a trend inasmuch as it’s going on everywhere,” said William Brown, 53, who brought his family to Simi Valley in 1977 from the quiet San Diego suburb of Santee.

“We still have the best city to live in,” Brown said. “It’s pretty quiet, and the people are friendly. I can’t think of too many other places I want to live.”

And, as Judy Shepherd put it, “Where can you run to?”