This is the third chapter in my MA thesis on Privatization of Public Space.
The bibliography is included in the complete paper.
This document is approximately 5000 words and may be downloaded.Frederique Krupa
Spring 1993Los Angeles: Buying the Concept of Security
Los Angeles's walled communities provide professionals from the real estate, entertainment and technology industries with an escape from the problems of the disenfranchised that lie beyond their well protected enclaves -- with tall gates, private security forces and 24-hour a day electronic surveillance. Los Angeles's form originated around the idealized concept of the detached single family home, made possible by the automobile. LA has become America's archetypal decentralized metropolis. Now the second largest city in the United States, LA's 3.4 million people sprawl evenly over 70 square miles, an area roughly a quarter larger than New York City with half New York City's population. Eighty two different language groups make LA in certain respects an even more cosmopolitan gateway city than New York City, which only has 55 language groups.1
In the 1980s, LA replaced New York City as the most popular point of entry for immigrants, shifting the demographics from a predominantly Anglo-Saxon population to one that is 40 percent Hispanic, 37 percent Caucasian, 13 percent African-American and 10 percent Asian and other races.2 The social polarization also shifted in the Reagan Era with affluent households (making over $50,000) nearly tripling from 9 percent to 26 percent, while the poor population (making under $15,000) increased from 30 percent to 40 percent. Correspondingly, the middle class was reduced by nearly half, from 61 percent to 32 percent.3 Protecting the lifestyles and property values of the upper and middle classes by keeping out undesirables has lead to increasing privatization -- and militarization -- of entire neighborhoods, while increasingly repressive actions by the infamous Los Angeles Police Department4 serve to keep the poor in their place.
...
Los Angeles's most dramatic growth occurred only in the last seventy years, developing with the automobile culture and the growth of the national highway system. LA resulted with today's familiar low-density amorphous developments of single family homes. But until the 1920s, LA had developed in much the same way as other cities, growing up around Henry Huntington's "Pacific Electric" mass transit system that first opened in 1901. The mass transit system, once the largest in the world, operated over 1,114 miles of tracks and carried an average of a quarter-million passengers a day.5 Though the city was decentralized from the start, downtown Los Angeles prospered enormously as a transit hub, creating a traditionally dominant urban center. Henry Huntington wisely purchased large areas of land around his tracks and prospered enormously from the suburban housing developments that he built around the lines. Other developers had to pay him subsidies to get crucial rail links that would guarantee successful developments.6
By the 1920s, the automobiles began crowding out the streetcars downtown. Commutes became unbearably long and the cost of home ownership around the streetcar lines became prohibitively expensive. Automobiles and additional street infrastructure were seen as a means of curtailing limits to the expansion of the suburbia. The paradigm of the single family house was upheld by would-be homeowners and the civic elite whose enormous wealth was largely derived from real estate speculation -- from selling each homeowner a plot of land, a house and a mortgage. The oil industry and corporations such as Firestone Rubber had strong interest in the dominance of the automobile over mass transit. With no resistance from civic leaders, a bond act was overwhelmingly approved in 1926 to build an extensive street and freeway infrastructure, and a mass transit rehabilitation proposal was easily defeated.7 By allowing the mass transit system to slowly decay, Los Angeles essentially sacrificed its downtown.
In response to the Depression in the 1930s, homeowners threatened with foreclosures on their high-interest, short-term mortgages were assisted by Roosevelt's 1933 Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). The HOLC refinanced over a million mortgages into what has become the industry standard: the self-amortizing (paying off both the interest and the principal) thirty-year mortgage. The rationalization of mortgages was at the center of the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). FHA mortgages financed and insured up to 90 percent of a home's value, suddenly making homeownership accessible to over 50 percent of the population. More importantly, developers could borrow FHA funds, as well as funds from the burgeoning savings and loans, to comfortably complete entire projects, including street construction. This master-community-builder approach was a major factor of Los Angeles's enormous development after the Second World War.8 As Robert Fishman put it, "The growth of Los Angeles was not only explosively rapid; it was also virtually unhampered by previous traditions and settlements. The city was surrounded by seemingly unlimited land, supported by a massive influx of people and capital, and led by an elite wholly committed to suburban expansion."9
Unlike traditional cities, class division in Los Angeles has never depended on proximity to its urban center as much as in other cities. Instead, class divisions are based on altitude. The less fortunate live in the flatland, named the Plains of Id by Reyner Banham,10 while those more fortunate locate themselves in the hills for purer air and better vantage points. Development in the foothills west of the meandering Los Angeles River (converted to a concrete-lined storm sewer by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s) began in the 1920s as affluent, planned communities. If a cliched aspect of LA's good life exists -- conjured up in the movies that originated there -- it is based on the image of these well publicized communities: Beverly Hills, Westwood, Brentwood, Bel Air, Santa Monica, Hollywood and Silver Lake. Developed by Alphonso Bell in the 1910s, Bel Air, one of the original gated communities, was so exclusive that Bell refused to sell homes to "movie people", (i.e. Jews).11 Built on the 3,300-acre Hamel and Denkel Ranch after a failed oil-finding mission, the 1913 master planned community of Beverly Hills, designed by New York architect Wilbur Cook, was incorporated as a separate city by the Rodeo Land and Water Company before any construction even took place.12 Beverly Hills became the preferred residence for those in the entertainment industry because of its proximity to the studios in seedier Hollywood.
...
When explosive growth of the decentralized metropolis threatened the very qualities that were being sold as the rights of homeownership -- secure property values and low-density unspoiled open space -- voluntary homeowners associations and later, the homeowner-led slow-growth movements coalesced. Los Angeles's homeowners associations (HAs) began in 1916 with the Los Felix Improvement Association which created the concept of deed restrictions for new planned communities. Los Angeles pioneered deed restrictions and zoning for expensive single-family homes, with racial and social exclusion clauses and minimum costs and sizes for construction of new homes.13 The creation of HAs, which Mike Davis refers to as the White Wall, put 95 percent of the available housing out of the reach of Asian and African-Americans in the 1920s.14 Although the United States Supreme Court finally ruled against racist deed restrictions in 1948, the Gary case of 1919, established by the California Supreme Court, allowed the HAs to file suits against non-white homeowners, including film stars like Hattie MacDaniel. Should "trespassing" minority homeowners attempt to defend their homes, Ku Klux Klan-type vigilantism prevailed.15
Because incorporating a small group of people as a separate city for the benefits of highly restrictive zoning was an undertaking only the most wealthy could afford, most middle class communities located themselves in county areas that were undertaxed and unincorporated. The Lakewood planned community, modeled after Levittown but twice the size, was threatened by annexation to Long Beach in the 1950s. The developers, Weingart, Boyar and Taper, devised the "Lakewood Plan" to incorporate it without the traditional vital-service costs of creating a separate city. Los Angeles County allowed Lakewood to lease its fire, police, sanitation, library and maintenance services at cut-rate prices, subsidized by the county's funds for the services. The communities retained their zoning privileges, while their services were subsidized by county taxpayers. To offset the loss of real estate taxes, the county gets money for existing infrastructure and for services that would normally have to be provided.
The 1956 Bradley-Burns Act allowed local governments to collect a one percent sales tax for their own use, so the new minimal cities with their new decentralized shopping malls were able to finance their city government without increasing property taxes. The 26 county-subsidized minimal cities that appeared between 1954 and 1960 also encouraged suburban separatism and local control - by zoning out service-intensive low-income renting populations. The resulting suburban exodus left the older parts of the city with little tax base for the predominantly poor population. The 1980 Census showed that while the county was 13 percent African-American, 53 of its 82 cities, 30 of which were Lakewood Plan incorporators, had African-American populations of one percent or less.16
If the first forty years of Los Angeles's history focused on the creation of "Bourgeois Utopias," as Robert Fishman calls racially and economically segregated suburban communities, the last thirty years have revolved around their defense. When the foothill's drawing points threatened them with overdevelopment, homeowner-led slow-growth movements entered the political arena. Unlike its counterpart in Northern California, the slow-growth movement was not rooted in environmentalism but rather the protection of property values and land-use control. If environmental concerns came into discussion at all, it was because the residents regarded the open space of their sprawling subdivision as important as Yosemite Park. Drastic real estate inflation made buying a house in the foothills just about impossible for anyone but the most well-to-do. The Federation of Hillside and Canyon Homeowners, founded in the gated colony of Bel Air in the 1950s, affiliated a dozen other communities to make sure that NIMBY development went elsewhere. When the gated community of Hidden Hills -- whose residents include Frankie Avalon, Bob Eubanks and Neil Diamond -- was threatened with a Superior Court Order to provide 48 units of senior citizen housing outside the gates, they complained that the old people would attract drugs and crime.17 The Federation has since grown to over 50 affiliations and, with its massive financial and legal powers, took on an even broader role than HAs ever could.18
In West LA, gates are erected around established neighborhoods of single-family bungalows. Depending on the HA's social class, the neighborhood fortification can vary from chain link fences and automatic gates -- prone to frequent malfunction -- for the middle class, to iron gates, masonry walls and full-time security guards for more prosperous communities. Each individual home often has a fence demarcating its property, so if an HA has a tight budget, gates can be erected between different enclosed properties to cut off the street to pedestrians and vehicles. Older gated communities have the aesthetic advantage of having developed gradually. While certain neighborhoods contain modest looking homes, many have been substantially altered and expanded, adding variety to the "public" street. The inflated land values for minuscule homes on small lots have also created more streetscape diversity by encouraging the construction of large new postmodern homes. Styles range from Santa Fe to Deconstruction. Color schemes for the older homes are more varied than the monotonous new gated communities being built by developers in the San Fernando Valley. It might even appear that style in LA is reserved for westsiders. Generally, only truly privileged members of society can afford to move into homes on the westside, much less tear one down and rebuild a new one, so the rest are forced to move farther and farther inland.
Aside from the riots of 1943, 1965 and 1992, few Westsiders really noticed the flourishing minority communities, as the pleasantly insulated affluent communities and autotopic lifestyles made entire sections of Los Angeles easily invisible. The slow, orange Regional Transit Department (RTD) buses, serving only those too old or too poor to drive, provide transportation for the immigrant workers that tend the households of the Foothills residents and serve as a reminder that the city really runs on cheap immigrant labor. The large, empty, unshaded sidewalks and precariously timed traffic signals lead David Rieff to comment, "The impression is inescapable that the advertisements you see on benches all over the Westside for Jewish funeral chapels are really a message aimed at anyone foolish enough to expect to survive as a walker in Los Angeles."19
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If the minorities are kept at bay, anxious property owners can thank the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Not only do they harass minorities that dare to trespass into bastions of privilege,20 they also quarantine poor neighborhoods in the name of war on drugs and gang control. While the New York City Police Dept has 27,000 officers for a population of seven million, LAPD has only 8300 officers serving an area 25 percent larger than New York and half as populated.21 In the 1920s, the LAPD developed mechanized policing by using squad cars instead of beat cops. In the 1950s, the legendary Chief Parker introduced the first police helicopter for aerial surveillance, further isolating the police from the communities they serve. As Mike Davis said, "Dragnet's Sergeant Friday precisely captured the Parkerized LAPD's quality of prudish alienation from a citizenry composed of fools, degenerates and psychopaths."22
The enormous area and lack of manpower has lead the LAPD to respond (increasingly) with tough paramilitary methods and high-tech weaponry. LAPD's 50 new French Aerospatiale helicopters, equipped with sophisticated infra-red heat-detection cameras and 30-million-candle-powered spotlights called "Nightsuns," and its fleet of Bell Jet Rangers average 19-hour days of aerial surveillance over high-crime areas (i.e. poor neighborhoods). Thousands of residential rooftops have been painted with large numbers creating a large grid for ground-air synchronization. An entire SWAT team can be airlifted to any region of the city, and can be seen frequently practicing their assaults on downtown high-rises, much like the movie Blue Thunder. LAPD's links with the Southern California aerospace/defense industry, has allowed them to acquire such technology as NASA's $42 million state-of-the-art communication system, named ECCCS, allowing access to vast databases on its citizens and guaranteeing secrecy of transmission.23 The LAPD's seemingly unlimited funding for these projects results mostly from gang hysteria and the ineffective war on drugs. Perhaps the LAPD's predilection for high-tech weapons might be better spent increasing their manpower to get back in touch with their communities.
...
Besides the physical and political disinvestment of ethnic Los Angeles, industrial disinvestment by relocating plants in Asia or much farther inland has eradicated 75,000 manufacturing jobs that once supplied African-Americans with decent wages. Residential and job growth in the 1980s happened to be in areas with African-American populations of one percent or less. Losing in the competition for menial jobs to recent immigrants who are seen as more docile and exploitable by employers, unemployed African-American youths in Los Angeles County remained at around 45 percent throughout the 1980s.24 By not replacing economic opportunities for jobs lost through foreign trade, minority youths frequently turn to one of the only economies left in the area -- dealing cocaine and crack. Following the classical capitalist principles of Adam Smith, young entrepreneurs -- loosely organized into two color-coded supergangs, the Bloods and Crips immortalized in the movie Colors -- sell their merchandise to the poor as well as the rich, accumulating fineries, weapons and reputations in the process.25
Gang-related violence has received more than its share of news coverage, but it occurs for the most part between rival gang members, averaging one homicide per day.26 Although the city attorney's office has recalculated the number of suspected gang-members from 10,000 to 50,000, the media and "gang experts" sensationalized this number up to around 100,000. As there are only about 100,000 African-Americans youths in all of Los Angeles County, the numbers appear extremely inflated.27 The result is that just about any minority teenager may be automatically suspected of being an Uzi-carrying, "narco-terrorist" just for wearing colored shoelaces or using a hand signal.28
After a young woman was gunned down in posh Westwood in December of 1987, the area's merchants demanded curfew ordinances and extra police protection, which made the African-American community leaders demand the same for their neighborhood. The LAPD was only happy to oblige. Since it had always been seen as an army of occupation, it now had the community's blessing to utilize its macho tactics on minority youths whose civil rights were suspended for this state of emergency. Any police misconduct was seen as a lesser evil than the gangs,29 so operation HAMMER began with selective curfews imposed on poor neighborhoods. Kids out past dusk would get police records (useful for future gang-related monitoring) for behavior that their affluent counterparts took for granted. Humiliatingly forcing children to "kiss the sidewalk" and processing them in mobile booking units, the hyped anti-gang sweeps also provided the LAPD with thousands of additional names and addresses of local teenagers, checked against their computerized list of gang members. By 1990 a total of 50,000 "suspects" had been picked up in this manner, 90 percent of whom were released without charges.
Since the sweeps proved worthless in stopping gang violence, Chief Gates created the first "narcotic enforcement zone" in October of 1989 by sealing off 27 blocks around the Pico-Union neighborhood with barricades and police checkpoints. As the Berlin Wall was coming down in December, LAPD spread Operation Cul-de-Sac by barricading a large section of Central Avenue in Southcentral, and a barrio in the Valley.30 The visible barriers proved even less effective, so the judicial system established class and racially biased statutes allowing for the eviction of entire families of people merely charged, not convicted, for drug dealing, as well as "bad parent" clauses that allow parents of minors to be charged. Five grams of crack ($125) yields a mandatory five year sentence, while it takes 500 grams of "yuppie cocaine" ($50,000) to get a similar sentence. Gang membership, not committing an actual crime, was now reason enough for conviction.31
How effective has this approach been? With juvenile crime rising by 12 percent annually, one out of 12 teenagers will be arrested, half for felonies. With more young African-American males in prison than in the entire University of California system, the penitentiary system currently has 84,000 inmates crowded into spaces designed for 48,000. Ironically, the penal colonies around central Los Angeles are now a major source of employment for minority males. Completely giving up on any hope of rehabilitation, the war on drugs is estimated to bring the total number incarcerated to 145,000 by 1995. The construction of prisons has become a new source of employment for celebrity architects such as Robert A.M. Stern's Pasadena Police and Jail Facility and Welton Becket's downtown Metropolitan Detention Center. Resembling a high-rise convention center or high-tech hotel, the Metropolitan Detention Center holds up to 70 percent of "the managerial elite of narco-terrorism" from the war on drugs.32
In the few platforms ever given to them, the articulate demands that gangs have made call for jobs, housing, recreational facilities, better schools and control of local institutions.33 While the LAPD budget neared $400 million in 1990, only $500,000 was set aside for an alternative employment program for a hundred "high-risk" youths. Most inner city employment training programs had already been dismantled during Governor Reagan's administration. For the 250,000 low-income latch-key children, the Bradley administration allocated only $30,000 for recreational equipment in 1987, encouraging parks to operate as fee generating enterprises. Funded by their surrounding neighborhoods, inner city parks are rapidly deteriorating, while parks in privileged neighborhoods are becoming increasingly controlled through "locals-only" restrictions designed to keep the poor families out.34 San Marino, one of the richest cities in the country, closes its parks on weekends to make sure the neighboring Asian and Latin communities are excluded. A plan is being considered to reopen the parks on Saturdays only to residents (with proof of residence). Following in their footsteps, other upscale communities are restricting parking to locals only; although, these communities tend to have three-car garages.35
...
In post-liberal Los Angeles, awareness of this desperate situation is such that the defense of the privileged and middle class neighborhoods has taken on a sudden urgency. The desire of the ordinary middle class to live in socially insulated communities has created a frenzy for security fencing around entire neighborhoods, emulating the luxury, fortressed "minimal" cities that developed in the 1950s and 1960s, like Hidden Hills, Bradbury, Palos Verdes Estates, Hidden Hills and Rancho Mirage. Older communities like Bradbury, with 900 residents and ten miles of private streets, are fully enclosed with guarded entry points and served by public and private security services and are impossible to enter without an invitation from a resident. The San Fernando Valley, completely open ten years ago, now has over one hundred newly gated communities. The demand for more security is nearly insatiable. Valley contractor Brian Weinstock remarked, "The demand is there on a three-to-one basis for a gated community than not living in a gated community."36 Forest City Enterprises, owners of the 1940s Park La Brea, have cut off pedestrian access and surrounded the 176-acre gentrifying development on Wilshire's Miracle Mile with security fencing.
Gated developments in the San Fernando Valley lack any of the architectural charm that the West Side has built up over time. The stringency of new HA design codes seems to discourage expansion or modification of the homes and fosters bland subdivisions such as can be found on the outskirts of any major town. Housing designs are often modern-colonial hybrids and available in the several shades of grey or beige. Anything that might deviate from the norm is considered a reselling hindrance, so everything is carefully maintained in a perpetual banality. Neighborhoods are composed of a few housing types, sometimes available in reverse plan to hopefully make homes appear more interesting. Since the San Fernando Valley is expanding farther and farther into the desert, serious environmental problems such as water shortages and smog are threatening these developments. But nothing it seems can stop the idealization of the single family home, and no price is too great, not even two-hour commutes, for peace of mind.
Needless to say, the homes of the rich are even more security centered, borrowing design ideas from foreign embassies for terrorist-proof security rooms accessed through secret doors. The concept of total residential security would not be complete without private security companies such as Westec or Bel-Air Patrol. "Armed response" signs dot the lawns of virtually all affluent subdivisions. HAs lease complete security packages, including hardware, monitoring, patrols, personal escorts and armed responses. Demand for security against the perceived threat of minority gangs has ironically provided minority males with one of the few job opportunities left to them, besides becoming prison guards. One of the fastest growing industries of the 1980s, private security guards comprised in 1990 twice the national labor average of 1970.37 In Los Angeles alone, the security workforce has tripled in the last ten years, from 24,000 to 75,000. While working for multinational conglomerates, security guards, often minority males, are paid minimal wages depending on literacy, and applicants with prison records are not automatically turned away under California's lax licensing practice. Michael Kaye, president of Westec, a subsidiary of Japan's Secom Ltd and the leading Westside security firm, revealed, "We're not a security guard company. We sell a concept of security."38
...
Whether these security measures fend off professional burglars is highly debatable, but they do work remarkably well at alienating innocent passers-by, confronting them with signs posting death threats. By establishing a siege mentality amongst middle and upper classes, the real problems are essentially ignored. The 1992 riot was triggered by the Rodney King verdict, but the pillaging carried out by the poor was really a response to desperate economic situations. The sight of people running down the street with boxes of diapers and foam mattresses illuminated the ironies of the situation. Unfortunately, the ensuing rush to buy firearms showed nothing had really been learned.39 The trend to privatize neighborhoods is not singular to Los Angeles, nor is its racial and economic polarization. Los Angeles illustrates these principles perhaps on a greater scale than cities such as Houston or Dallas, but unless these issues are confronted in a realistic manner, periodic riots, repressive police actions, increasing gang violence and environmental degradation promise to reduce the quality of life for all citizens.
Chapter 3 Endnotes
1. Robert Reinhold; "Groping for Ways to Break the Siege Mentality", New York Times,July 14, 1992, pg. D6, and David Rieff, Los Angeles, pg. 105.
2. Robert Reinhold, "Fate of Police Chief is Hotly Debated After Beating", New York Times, March 14, 1991, pg. A14.
3. Mike Davis, City of Quartz, pg. 7.
4. I am referring to the March 3, 1991 incident of the videotaped vicious beating of Rodney King by four police officers while 16 others looked on. All the policemen were white; Rodney King was black. The acquittal of the police officers by an all-white jury in Simi Valley resulted in five days of rioting in Los Angeles in May of 1992, resulting 58 deaths and millions of dollars in property damage. Numerous other incidents occurred around the country. A federal investigation uncovered rampant racial discrimination throughout the LAPD. See Seth Mydans, "Seven Minutes in Los Angeles: A Special Report", New York Times, March 18, 1991, pg. A1 and "Riots in Los Angeles: Overview", May 1, 1992, pg. A1. Also "After the Riots: 58 Riot Deaths, 50 Have Been Ruled Homicide", New York Times, May 17, 1992, pg. A26. Also Robert Reinhold ,"Riots in Los Angeles: The Blue Blue Line", New York Times, May 1, 1992, pg. A1.
5. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias, pg. 159. For more information on the Pacific Electric, see Spencer Crump; Ride the Big Red Cars; Los Angeles, Crest Publications, 1962.
6. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 159-60.
7. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 166, also David Brodsly; L.A. Freeway: An Appreciative Essay; Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981, appendix and Crump, Ride the Big Red Cars, pg. 165-70.
8. Fishman, Ibid, pg. 175 and Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, Chapter 11. Another less mentioned aspect of L.A.'s growth during war was a result of 10 to 20 percent of all prime defense contracts that were given to firms in Southern California. War production brought in over a million workers -- many were African-Americans from the south looking for better employment -- and accounted for 20 percent of the areas Gross National Product, more than twice the amount of the more publicized entertainment industry. See Rieff, Los Angeles, pg. 76.
9. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 158.
10. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles, pg. 161-179.
11. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 168. During the Depression, the policy was discarded.
12. Fishman, Ibid., pg. 168. The city was named after Beverly Farms in Massachusetts, an exclusive resort town north of Boston.
13. Davis, City of Quartz, pg. 160-161. See also Marc Weiss, The Rise of Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry, New York, 1987, pg. 3-12.
14. Davis, Ibid, pg. 160-4. The Anti-African Housing Association, turning into the University District Property Owner's Association, was established in 1922 to fight the "Negro Invasion" of African-Americans and Asians attempting to buy homes outside the over-crowded ghettos east of Budlong Avenue.
15. Davis, Ibid. 163 and 400-2. In the 1940s, a home was blown up by the KKK on 30th St., whites rioted on 71st St. against home sales to African-Americans. In 1945, after refusing to be bought out by the Fontana Chamber of Commerce, the entire Short family was killed when their home exploded.
16. Davis, Ibid., pg. 165-69.
17. Other NIMBY disputes involve day-care centers, retirement homes, restaurants and even Nancy Reagan's ill-fated drug treatment center. See Davis, Ibid., pg. 204 and 246.
18. Davis, Ibid., Pg. 169-73.
19. David Reiff, Los Angles, pg. 120. He also made the brilliant assertion that although Westsiders consider jogging to be an important activity, yardwork is considered a waste of time. See "The Stoicism of Maids", "Modern Times" and "Alien Nation".
20. Mike Davis, City of Quartz, pg. 284-5. Don Jackson, a black off-duty police officer decided to expose the racism of police officers towards minorities, bringing a group of young African-Americans into the Village. Although they carefully observed the law, the group was forced to "kiss the concrete" and searched for drug and weapons. Despite police identification, Jackson was arrested for disturbing the peace. Chief Gates claimed at a press conference that Jackson provoked the incident to create a cheap publicity stunt. Twenty-four minority teenagers were arrested for trying to play baseball in Will Rogers State Park. They were kept face down for more than 90 minutes while the police brutalized them, saying the Pacific Palisade park was for "rich white people only."
21. Timothy Egan, "Less Risk for Police Officers", New York Times, April 25, 1991, pg. B10.
22. Davis, Ibid, pg. 251.
23. Davis, Ibid, pg. 250-3.
24. Davis, Ibid, pg. 304.
25. Davis, Ibid. pg. 309-13.
26. Davis, Ibid, pg. 270.
27. Davis, Ibid, pg. 270, 277 and 316. There are supposedly 230 African-American and Latino gangs, with 81 additional Asian gangs.
28. The LAPD's high-publicity anti-gang sweeps, code-named HAMMER, began in 1987 and target "drug neighborhoods", picking up anyone suspected of being in gang based on dress and gang hand signal. See Davis, pg. 271-7.
29. I am referring to the killing of Eulia Love in 1978, a widow who had defaulted on her gas bill. She was shot twelve times for not allowing the utility workers on her property, while wielding a two-inch pearing knife. Chief Gates explained the rash of minority deaths due to chokeholds as, "We may be finding that in some Blacks when the chokehold is applied the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do on normal people." As Part of operation HAMMER, an unarmed boy was shot cowering behind a tree; he was suspected of being a gang member. Eighty eight police officers from the Southwest Division raided a house on Dalton street in Aug. 1988 and wielding guns, sledgehammer, racial slurs and search warrants, proceeded to completely destroy the house. No wanted gang members were found. The Red Cross offered disaster relief and temporary assistance to the 32 residents, who had been forced to run a gauntlet of cops beating them with fists and to whistle the theme from Andy Griffith Show. The city had to pay $3 million in fines. They at least did not have to be confronted by Nancy Reagan, who on April 6, 1989, assisted the first designer drug raid, clocking in her first visit to Southcentral Los Angeles after being a fifty year resident of the sunshine state. See Davis, Ibid, pg. 271-3 and Seth Mydans, "Seven Minutes in Los Angeles: A Special Report", New York Times, March 18, 1991, pg. A1. Nancy Reagan is also covered in David Rieff's Los Angeles, pg. TK.
30. Davis, Ibid, pg. 207.
31. Davis, Ibid, pg. 283-8. Even though he was not at the scene of the crime and did not know the murder would occur, a 20-year old Chinese man was sentenced to two life terms for being an accessory to the murder of a federal agent. Having robbed a McDonalds in Sunland with pellet guns, three young Latinos were killed by an elite LAPD stake-out team, while the seriously injured fourth boy was charged with the murder of his friends.
32. Davis, Ibid, pg. 255-7.
33. Davis, Ibid, pg. 300-1.
34. Davis, Ibid, pg. 302-8.
35. Davis, Ibid, pg. 246.
36. Davis, Ibid, pg. 245-50. See also Jim Carlton, "Walled In", Los Angeles Times, Oct. 8, 1989, pg. B1. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is also planning to wall off the base of the Hollywood sign and installing video cameras and motion detectors.
37. Reich, Work of Nations, pg. 269. See also
38. Davis, Ibid, pg. 250. Rieff, Los Angeles, pg. 126. Linda Williams, "Safe and Sound", Los Angeles Times, Aug. 29, 1988, pg. D5.
39. Timothy Egan; "Big Rise in the Sale of Guns"; New York Times, May 14, 1992, pg. A1.
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