Los Angeles has been experiencing significant decline in crime since the mid-1990s, and reached a 50-year low in 2009 with 314 homicides. Antonio Villaraigosa is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition.
In 2009, Los Angeles reported 314 homicides, which corresponds to a rate of 7.85 (per 100,000 population)—a major decrease from 1993, when the all time homicide rate of over 21.1 (per 100,000 population) was reported for the year. This included 15 officer-involved shootings. One shooting led to the death of a SWAT team member, Randal Simmons, the first in LAPD's history.
The Los Angeles crime family dominated organized crime in the city during the Prohibition era and reached its peak during the 1940s and 1950s as part of the American Mafia but has gradually declined since then with the rise of various black and Hispanic gangs.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the city is home to 26,000 gang members, organized into 250 gangs.[135] Among them are the Crips, Bloods, Sureños, Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street. This has led to the city being referred to as the "Gang Capital of America".
Watts Riots
The riots began on August 11, 1965, in Watts, when Lee Minikus, a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer, pulled Marquette Frye over. Minikus believed Frye was intoxicated because of observing his driving which Minikus believed to be erratic. While police questioned Marquette Frye and his brother Ronald Frye, a group of people began to gather. The mob began to throw rocks and other objects and shout at the police officers. A struggle ensued shortly after Frye's mother, Rena, arrived on the scene, resulting in the arrest of all three family members.
As a result of the riots, 34 people were officially reported killed (28 of those were African American), 1,032 people were injured, and 4,000 people were arrested. Among the dead were a fireman, an L.A. County deputy sheriff and a Long Beach police officer. The injured included 773 civilians, 90 Los Angeles police officers, 136 firefighters, 10 national guardsmen, and 23 persons from other governmental agencies. 118 of those injured were injured by firearms.
Six-hundred buildings were damaged or destroyed, and an estimated $35 million in damage was caused. Most of the physical damage was confined to businesses that were said to have caused resentment in the neighborhood due to perceived unfairness. Homes were not attacked, although some caught fire due to proximity to other fires.
Hippie Riots
Crack epidemic
Crack cocaine first began to be used on a massive scale in Los Angeles in 1984.Between February and July 1984 cocaine abuse and related violence had exploded to unprecedented levels in the city, and by 1985, crack was available in most of the major American cities. South Central, where the crack cocaine problem was the worst in the country, became the site of many police raids. Previously unknown gangs were growing and new were emerging. The rap music genre, TV shows and movies portrayed that part of Los Angeles as a no-go zone and a highly violent area.
Los Angeles riots of 1992
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots, also known as the Rodney King uprising or the Rodney King riots, were sparked on April 29, 1992 when a predominately white jury acquitted four police officers accused in the videotaped violent and brutal beating of black motorist Rodney King when he allegedly resisted arrest following a high-speed car chase. King had a history of criminal convictions and drug use. Thousands in the Los Angeles area joined in a race riot involving acts of law-breaking, including looting, assault, arson and murder, seeing in King an example of injustice against minorities in the United States. The situation became too difficult to be handled by local police and the California National Guard as well as the U.S. Marine Corps were called in. About 5 National Guardsmen were injured during the riots. Overall, 53 people died during the riots.
North Hollywood shootout
The North Hollywood shootout was an armed confrontation between two heavily-armed and armored bank robbers, Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu, and patrol and SWAT officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in North Hollywood, California on February 28, 1997. It occurred when responding patrol officers engaged Phillips and Matasareanu leaving the robbed bank. Seventeen officers and civilians were wounded before both robbers were killed. Phillips and Matasareanu had previously robbed several banks prior to their attempt in North Hollywood and were notorious for their heavy armament, which included automatic assault rifles.
C.R.A.S.H.
Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, usually known as C.R.A.S.H., was a special unit of the Los Angeles Police Department established in the early 1970s to combat the rising problem of gangs in Los Angeles, California. Each of the 18 divisions had a C.R.A.S.H. unit whose primary goal was to suppress the influx of gang-related crimes in Los Angeles that came about primarily due to the increase in narcotics trade. C.R.A.S.H was also used in the popular game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as an antagonist organization.
Rampart Scandal
The Rampart Scandal refers to widespread corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (C.R.A.S.H.) anti-gang unit of the LAPD Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers in the CRASH unit were implicated in misconduct, making it one of the most widespread cases of documented police misconduct in United States history. The convicted offenses include unprovoked shootings, unprovoked beatings, planting of evidence, framing of suspects, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury, and covering up evidence of these activities.
The Los Angeles May Day mêlée
South Los Angeles, more widely known as South Central Los Angeles was a notoriously dangerous region of the City of Los Angeles which had an extensive history of gang violence starting in the 1920s with white gangs and evolving to black and Hispanic gangs. Crime has steadily dropped in South Los Angeles since the late '90s. However gang activity has not declined.
South Central had become a byword for urban decay, its bad reputation spread by movies such as Colors, South Central, Menace II Society, Poetic Justice, Friday, and in particular, South Central native John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood. The rap group N.W.A.'s album Straight Outta Compton and the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas also popularized South Central's bad image.
Crips and Bloods Feud
After the FBI crack down on black political organizations in the late 1960s, a social vacuum formed among black adolescents living in South Central Los Angeles. Into this vacuum, came two new gangs: the Crips and the Bloods. Conflict between the two rival gangs arose immediately. In the next 40 years, fighting between the two took 5 times as many lives as the long running sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. The continuing cause of the feud is best expressed as a "kill or be killed" culture described by T. Rodgers, co-founder of the Bloods, as "You better respect me. You better fear me." Speaking in a 2007 film documentary, a former Crip, named Pete, who survived to his middle years, said,
These wars go farther back than most of these kids been around. A lot of 'em [are] not sure about why the war was goin' on. They [simply] STARTED DOIN' WHAT WAS BEIN' DONE.
The problem began with poverty and segregation, but has worsened with drugs, family separation and parental incarceration. The key to improving things, according to mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, is education.
Social impact
A 2003 comparison of twin psychological studies by the Lancet and Rand corporations indicates that a small percentage of children in South Los Angeles are exhibiting greater levels of post-traumatic stress disorder than children of a similar age in Baghdad, the war-torn capital of Iraq.
All about Los Angeles:
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