It Spells "Declining Property Values"

I thought it was just me. In response to ominous changes in our neighborhood, I grow outraged, fearful, indignant. I marched up and down the blocks surrounding our house to get people to report the damage to their property when “just a bunch of kids” drove around shooting car windows out with a pellet gun. I called the police to alert them to a giant “flyer party” down the street on a recent Saturday night. I emailed my city council representative to notify him of the litter and decay in the median of a prominent intersection. I report abandoned grocery store carts to the email address given to us by the local police station.

It doesn’t matter. The grocery carts proliferate, especially near the bus stops and apartment buildings. The officer on duty on that Saturday night connected me to dispatch, which, after a 20-minute wait, never even picked up my call. The neighbors didn’t bother reporting the bullet holes and shattered windows in their cars after the pellet gun mischief.

If the low-stakes activity isn’t handled, what will get the attention of people who can stop it? Does somebody have to get hurt, or God forbid, killed to get some action around here? This neighborhood is nice enough, but we are surrounded by apartment buildings where people have less invested in the property in which they live. We are on a street that is a route to a junior high. It is lined with “Drug Free Zone” signs that the city only recently erected. Drug-free, my ass. What “just a bunch of kids” goes on a pellet gun shooting spree without the assistance of drugs or at least alcohol?

I took my two young children out for a walk on a sunny morning last week. It all started out just fine. We headed for a post office mailbox that is inexplicably stationed on a side street in front of an old house. I was excited about giving the two-year-old his first real mailbox experience, mailing a letter to Nana and Great Grampa. But my spirits were dampened when I saw what could not be anything else but a gang tag painted on the hood of a van in front of a nice house just like ours only 2 blocks away.

Guess what was on the US government’s mailbox? The same gang tag. Kyle asked me “What’s dat spell, Mommy?”

“It spells ‘we’re moving to Connecticut.'” And I showed him how to mail the letter, and we headed for the nicer part of town for the rest of our walk.

I see the writing on the walls and mailboxes, and I also saw the same gang tag on an electrical box by the traffic light around the other corner. Calling the police won’t make a difference. The neighbors don’t care or are too scared to do anything about it, and I don’t blame them. In the last month, 2 grandmothers were killed in separate instances when they confronted “just a bunch of kids” in the act of creating graffiti. Shot in the backs of their heads. How can ordinary people defend against that?

Like I said, I thought I was the only one tortured by all of this. But this morning I read an article in the Los Angeles times about a group of community members who actually did something about it, for a long time, to keep their neighborhood free of graffiti. To keep it from falling into the hands of gangs. In light of the killings, however, now even they’re too scared. They love their neighborhood, but they talk about moving away.

I have been wanting to start a neighborhood watch program around here for two years. But there’s no way I would risk my life to protect the crappy vans of my neighbors who don’t care. Instead, I hound my husband to figure his shit out so we can get the hell out of here. Mark my words – our children will NOT go to school in a city where you have to drive an armored car just to get safely to and from kindergarten.

Chief of Police William Bratton made his mark in New York City with a graffiti eradication program that helped him bring the crime rate down. If the lame response from our local police station is any measure of his success in Los Angeles, then he’s doing a pretty shitty job. In a neighborhood that still has some worth in it, wouldn’t it be easier to stop this stuff from proliferating before it gets too widespread? Wouldn’t it be easier while there are still people living here who actually care? My guess is that the police department’s resources are spread so thin that they can only react to larger crimes happening elsewhere. That, and pregnant women who turn right on red and pose significant danger at 5 miles per hour.

If nobody does anything about the encroaching taggers, then Beverly Hills, someday they’ll get you too. Law-abiding residents who don’t own bulletproof armor will move away or die. And this will be a city run by the gangs. Forget the wall between America and Mexico. We’ll need a wall around Los Angeles.