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Compton - Sheriff's Back In Town, Boys
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1728 Reads
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Whole lotta shooting going on in Compton, folks. I mean, more than they were expecting. So the LA Sheriff's Department is moving back in. Again.
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2005 was one of the bloodiest on record for Compton, clocking in close to 80 homicides. In an effort to reduce the number of weapons in the area the city ran a "Guns For Gifts" program during the Christmas season. Drop off a weapon, no questions asked. They got hundreds turned in and it still didn't curb the violence.
So the Los Angeles Sheriff deployed an extra gang unit, and more deputies from surrounding areas into Compton. Problem is, a lot of them have been promoted, or transferred to other areas.
"Clearly, the past week has shown that the community is not stable enough to sustain a reduction in staff," Baca said Tuesday.
Yeah, no shit.
Up until the beginning of July there had only been 13 gang related shootings in the city. By that time the year previous there had been 38. Pretty substantial drop, right?
This last weekend saw twenty shootings. In two days. Of those, not all ended in death, but that's really not the point. Two girls, ages 2 and 3, were caught up in one of the firefights and were wounded. A 19 year old man was killed.
People had been hoping that this year would not be like the last. That maybe the worst of the violence was over. Not so much.
As of Sunday, there had been 21 homicides in the city and another three killings within blocks of the city boundaries in unincorporated areas also patrolled by sheriff's deputies. Nearly all of the killings are thought to be gang-related.
No surprise there. But this next bit is what bothers me.
Baca said some of the recent violence appears to have been racially motivated - with black gang members attacking Latinos and Latino gang members attacking blacks.
We're pretty wary of riots out here, having been through some pretty heinous ones in our history, but they've usually been white / government / authority against [fill in the blank], though the people who usually suffer the most are the very ones rioting.
With the recent problems in the Los Angeles jails and the question of immigration looming over Angelenos' heads, I have to wonder if the next big social earthquake is going to be black against Latino. We're already seeing it in gang circles. At what point does it begin to spill over into other areas of the community?
Yeah, it's a hot summer, all right. In more ways than one.
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| Posted by: S_Blackmoore on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - 12:57 PM
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