California: "Result of crackdown may be increased violence"

[cuchulainn]

from the San Mateo County Times

http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11268~1781782,00.html

Friday, November 21, 2003 - 5:55:06 AM PST

Result of crackdown may be increased violence
While shootings are up, homicides have stayed relatively level

By Suzanne Zalev and Amy Yarbrough, STAFF WRITERS

EAST PALO ALTO -- The city's police may have indirectly caused a recent increase in gun violence.

Because the police have cracked down on drug dealing, Police Chief Wes Bowling said, they may have diminished the territory where dealers can sell dope, creating a "little war."

"It was a little surprising to us that this would occur," Bowling said Thursday. "We didn't think that this would happen as a result of what we were doing. We've created another small monster by cracking down on one type of crime."

Since Aug. 1, there have been about 50 shootings in East Palo Alto, Bowling said -- instances in which weapons were fired, but not necessarily in which people were shot. There were about six shootings just in the last week, he said. Normally,

there would be three or four a month.

About 18 people have been shot in East Palo Alto since Aug. 1, according to news releases. Bowling did not have numbers immediately available.

The most recent shooting victim was a 15-year-old East Palo Alto boy, who was shot in the 2300 block of University Avenue around 1 p.m. Wednesday. San Mateo County Sheriff's Sgt. Tom Gallagher said the teen told police he was walking down the street when a gold sedan pulled up next to him and someone fired several shots.

The boy was struck at least five times in the lower back and legs, but his injuries are not considered life-threatening. Investigators believe it was gang-related, although several stray rounds struck a nearby construction trailer, Gallagher said.

But while shootings are up, homicides in the one-time national murder capital are not. There have been seven so far this year, Bowling said, and that's "right on par for what we normally see."

Councilwoman Pat Foster lives in the neighborhood where many shootings have occurred -- there was one around the corner on Sunday -- and she said she hasn't seen anything like this since 1989.

"I lie in bed and I hear the gunshots," she said.

Bowling said there have been a lot of drug-related robberies, and some shootings into houses. Some of the crime, he said, may be connected to parolees who have recently been released from prison. One was the victim in one of the shootings earlier this week.

"I'm sure that's old wounds that are reopened once these people hit the streets," he said.

To combat the problem and determine the cause, the city is putting more officers on the street and working with other law enforcement agencies, such as state parole officers and the Sheriff's Department, City Manager Alvin James said. The sheriff is helping provide more law enforcement, James said, and the city has spoken to adjacent Menlo Park about providing assistance.

"At this point in time, we're trying to get all the best minds in law enforcement together, share information and see if anyone can construct an overall picture of what's happening," James said.

The city has also scheduled a community meeting for next week to discuss the situation, James said. It will begin at 6 p.m. at the Creative Montessori Learning Center, 1421 Bay Road.

Foster said she thinks the problem could be solved by investing in young people. There are too many kids dropping out of school, she said, and that leads to unemployment, and the unemployed youth, looking for something to do, are selling drugs.

"It's a matter of putting the resources into the youth," Foster said. "It's much cheaper to do it right the first time than to have to put it in afterwards."

Prisons are expensive, she said, and the inmates aren't rehabilitated.

Bowling and James said the police are trying to prevent the situation from getting worse.

"We're trying to get out ahead of the curve. We don't want this to look like it did a decade ago," Bowling said.

©2003 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers

 

[Pilgrim]

To combat the problem and determine the cause, the city is putting more officers on the street and working with other law enforcement agencies, such as state parole officers and the Sheriff's Department, City Manager Alvin James said. The sheriff is helping provide more law enforcement, James said, and the city has spoken to adjacent Menlo Park about providing assistance.

Sounds like it is time to arm the local neighborhood watch.

Prisons are expensive, she said, and the inmates aren't rehabilitated.

If neighborhood watch is armed, crowded or ineffective prisons will not be a problem.

Pilgrim

 

[Standing Wolf]

East Palo Alto is "home" to thousands of illegal aliens.

 

[Travis McGee]

Just another aspect of "Unintended Consequences."

 

[Langenator]

"It's a matter of putting the resources into the youth," Foster said. "It's much cheaper to do it right the first time than to have to put it in afterwards."

So basically, what she wants in more moeny spent on schools and youth social programs, programs that already aren't working. California already spends huge sums on schools and social programs. More money isn't going to improve things.

The "investment" that needs to be made in the youth is large investments of time, made by the kids' parents.

 

[Jim March]

Do y'all understand how East PA came about?

EPA is just across a major freeway and railroad tracks from Palo Alto, a wealthy Liberal community dominated by Stanford U. Palo Alto literally kicked the black chunk of the city out of Palo Alto to form EPA, in a purely segregationist move back in the 1950s. PA put EPA together with no business base to provide an economic engine for adequate police, schools, fire, etc.

EPA provided the "service sector" for the university and the wealthy in PA, both before and after the "split".

During the 1960s, it became unfashionable to have black servants. So the school and rich canned 'em all.

By the 1970s, runaway unemployment had set in, and the place was well on it's way towards "ghetto" status. Once the crack epidemic of the 1980s hit, the place really blew up, when combined with California's gun control and the lack of adequate policing. At least one year (1988? or close...) it made the "number one" slot for per-capita murder rate.

*Everything* that happened was caused either by the overt racism of the '50s or the idiotic Liberal type that came along later (devoid of any understanding of history OR cause and effect).

 

[jimpeel]

"It was a little surprising to us that this would occur," Bowling said Thursday. "We didn't think that this would happen as a result of what we were doing. We've created another small monster by cracking down on one type of crime."

We all knew that this is the consequence that this type of action brings. We have early 21st century history to tell us that; but what do we know? We're mere laymen while you are experts.

 

[Cal4D4]

Thanks for the history/demographics of EPA, Jim. The Palo Alto they created is pretty impressive. The only homeless types I have seen had all their holdings in luggage and duffel bags. This is in the freeway to Stanford zone. Never East of the 101.

 

[7.62FullMetalJacket]

EPA is in the can because of local government/elite decisions from the 60's through the 80's. Your explanation was very clear, Mr. March.

My question, which is not directed at Jim, is this:

Has anyone put a fence around EPA and prevented the departure of those desiring work and a better life? I have been through there and saw no fences. Is EPA a base for those which prefer to suck from society or enrich society? I do not know BUT I have a pretty good idea. It is always a question of choice.

 

[Sven]

Jim: Interesting history there - hadn't heard that before, but it makes sense.

I am insolated from EPA by dozens of blocks of Palo Alto and that highway. The place has really started to turn around, now that they carved up a bit and installed a Home Depot, IKEA, Starbucks, etc... if they have one really bad spot now, why not just police it? Seems the cops have their work cut out for them - monitor the hotspots full-time.

 

[M1911Owner]

Palo Alto literally kicked the black chunk of the city out of Palo Alto to form EPA

Jim, are you sure about that? The dividing line between Palo Alto and EPA is the San Mateo county line. I've been under the impression that cities in CA aren't allowed to be in more than one county. So, unless I'm wrong about that, EPA was never a part of Palo Alto. In fact, it wasn't even a city until about 10 or 15 years ago, when they had an incorporation election. So Palo Alto definitely didn't kick them out in the 50's to form EPA.

I don't doubt that the rest of it might have happened, though. Palo Alto is unbelievably liberal.


The police in EPA are, well, "interesting." A few years ago, I was moving my business from offices in Mountain View to my home, then in LAH. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a mover lifted some blank checks from the bottom of a box of checks. I got a call from a store in EPA that someone was trying to cash a paycheck from my company. Somebody I had never heard of. The guy split, leaving his ID at the store. The Santa Clara Co Sheriff carefully investigated it, came out to my place, dusted for fingerprints, the whole thing. They figured out who did it--one of the movers. However, all that was done in Santa Clara County was a petty theft--theft of a few check forms, worth maybe a buck. So, there wasn't much useful they could do. However, a felony had been committed in EPA--passing a bad check. The EPA police had the guy's ID. But, they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it.


Sven, whereabouts are you?--I'm near Alma and Churchill.

 

[Jim March]

On the separation of PA and EPA, I'm working from memory going back 15 years, but I'm pretty sure of what I'm talking about. I could look it up...hmmmm...

AH! I see what happened - I was sorta right, sorta wrong. More right than wrong though:

1950s
But in the next dozen years, widening of Bayshore Highway and annexation decimated East Palo Alto's business base. In 1949 and '59 Hiller and other companies and residences in Belle Haven and Newbridge were annexed into Menlo Park. The loss amounted to about one-fourth of the population and the property value historically considered part of East Palo Alto (see map: http://www.romic.com/epahistory/map.htm).

When the University Avenue cloverleaf was built as part of the freeway project, more than 50 businesses were forced to relocate. Only five chose to remain. A replacement commercial area between University and Capitol avenues was planned, and homes were cleared to make way. But the business district never fully reestablished itself, and in 1958 another large industrial area was annexed into Menlo Park.

In the following years - as the rest of the Bay Area witnessed growth and prosperity - East Palo Alto, for a number of reasons, was in a weak position to compete with its neighbors for desirable economic development. Not only was there little growth, but several key businesses shut their doors.

Source: http://www.romic.com/epahistory/frame.htm - it's a frames page, click on "Business Districts (late 1920s to today)" in the left-hand column.

So what happened was, surrounding cities grabbed the business district, or almost all of it, and the wealthiest (read: whitest) residential areas. That left a few businesses and a large poor black residential area. As the poor area got worse from general neglect, businesses left in the city of EPA suffered lack of customers from the "seedy address".

OK. Net effect was about the same. Anybody here NOT think those annexations were at least partially racist in nature?

Another issue: it's the "ghetto" that has the closest access to a freeway anywhere in the Bay Area, which made it a natural drug-dealer's dream. That in turn helped cause the crack cocaine blowup that peaked around '88.

7.62FullMetalJacket: if you convince people that "the game is rigged against them", if you cripple their schools, if you discriminate against them in the job market (which was CHRONIC prior to 1965 or so and continues to at least some degree today although fading), if you set up welfare programs that worked to immediately cut off any mother who has a guy around and thus prevent the formation of families, if the police are clearly racist (want hard data? I've got scads) and a pile of other factors I could spend all day on, the population will do one of two things:

1) Those that can will move away. "Can" in this case covers income, liquid funds (net housing values dropped steadily between 1950 and at least mid-1970, figuring inflation), mental health, addictions, etc.

2) Those who can't will simply go nuts. Well not all, but enough to create a literally nutso culture. (How nuts? Well, the nearby city of Oakland gave up holding rap concerts at the city ballpark after three in a row turned into riots. Good God, go listen to any "Gangsta Rap" CD, if you can stomach it. The hottest rap act today is some moron name of "50 Cent"...his "street cred" consists of 8 bullet holes in his stupid "gangsta" hide. Shall I go on?)

-----------------------

A side issue: EPA is unique among the SF Bay Area "ghettos" in terms of it's origins, as it was originally a service-economy base. Almost all the others were connected to shipping or ship-building going back to the 1930s and then picking up strong in WW2: Richmond, Pittsburg (yes, they mis-spelled it!), West Oakland, the SF "Hunter's Point" area, the small one in Redwood City, etc. Only the SF "Tenderloin" district might have a similar service-sector origin. Richmond and West Oakland also had some low-grade industrial work that was "traditionally black"...in all these cases, blacks were allowed certain lower-income jobs and allowed housing nearby.

I'm not kidding with the word "allowed". Not even a little bit. Jobs outside of ironworks, longshoremen and a few others simply didn't happen prior to the mid-60's. Housing outside "their areas" was equally unheard of. The problem was, those industries started drying up by the early '50s, they were in seriously poor health by the mid-60's yet the people were stuck there unless they could move FAR away. And with the value of their homes bottoming out, welfare became the only option for too many.

EPA was the same basic thing, only the type of industry that croaked differed.

Go to Oakland and jump on BART (subway) at the city's center or Lake Merritt, and go South. Do this by day. As you approach the Oakland Colliseum and just south of that, look out the windows at the massive industrial buildings and steelworks that are still standing abandoned.

Blacks used to work there, and in a hell of a lot of similar places.

 

[Sven]

I live not five blocks from you. What a small world. Let's go shooting - check your pm.

 

[c_yeager]

Am i the only one that doesnt even care that drug dealers are killing one another?

 

[Jim March]

1) You should, if they're spraying the entire local geography.

2) If basically an entire neigborhood turns into an ongoing criminal enterprise, then something has gone seriously wrong. Sheesh. Seems pretty dang useful to know what broke.