Solutions
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswi...e-Ridden-South-L-A-s-Watts-Sees-Violence-Drop
Remember Watts? Remember the riots there? The gangs.
Quotes from the article
middle of his shift, Los Angeles police officer Keith Mott trades his gun and uniform for a T-shirt and shorts, and heads to a park in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles. He's there to coach 7- and 8-year-old boys on the Pop Warner Pee Wee football team, the Watts Bears.
The kids come from three nearby housing projects: Jordan Downs, Nickerson Gardens and Imperial Courts. The park was carefully chosen. It's a neutral site for local gangs. Otherwise, most of the Bears' parents wouldn't allow them to come and play.
Since the 1960s, the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles has been synonymous with gang violence and racial tension. Combative relations between police and members of the community have long been the norm.
Lately, there's been some improvement. Violent crime has dropped by almost 50 percent in three of Watts' toughest housing projects. There's been only one homicide there in the past two years.
It's a dramatic turnaround — one that's explained in part by proactive efforts by community leaders and changes within the Los Angeles Police Department.
"Even some of the parents who have come out here ... they've talked to us, and they've told us, 'You know, the idea of me standing next to a police officer, [after] all the years I've hated the police.' And they realize we're just here trying to make a difference in the community," Mott says.
Mott, with the LAPD's Southeast Division, is not just any Los Angeles police officer. He's one of 30 cops selected to be part of the force's relatively new anti-crime effort in Watts, the Community Safety Partnership. It's a pilot program targeting the three projects where the Watts Bears' kids come from.
Much of the time, the officers patrol the sprawling, two-story developments on foot. They try to be on a first-name basis with residents. The idea is to engage more than arrest, Mott says, and the program's early success is backed up by the numbers.
The Los Angeles Police Department helped launch the Watts Bears, a team of the Pee Wee division of Pop Warner football, in 2012. The players come from the neighborhood and practice at a park that's considered a neutral site between local gangs.i
The Los Angeles Police Department helped launch the Watts Bears, a team of the Pee Wee division of Pop Warner football, in 2012. The players come from the neighborhood and practice at a park that's considered a neutral site between local gangs.
Courtesy of The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles
Take homicides, for example. Among the three projects, there were 43 between 2005 and August 2011 — the month the Community Safety Partnership began. There's been just one homicide since. And according to the LAPD, since 2010, violent crime is down 57 percent in Imperial Courts, 54 percent in Jordan Downs and 38 percent in Nickerson Gardens.
"People look around and they're always seeing the officers," Mott says. "The gangsters, the knuckleheads and the dope dealers, they look around their corners. [If] there's a police officer on the corner, they're moving their activities elsewhere."