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Hollywood Confronts Crime
| Article
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10313 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1993 |
2,761 Words |
| Author
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Ronald Jackson
Ronald Jackson is a free-lance writer whose work has appeared
in the Los Angeles Times and other publications. |
The glitz of Hollywood has tarnished in recent years as the high-profile district has attracted street criminals. When night falls, a tide of pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, carjackers, robbers, and gang bangers plague the "City of Dreams." Yesterday's lavish movie premieres have relinquished the front pages to drive-by shootings. The exquisite night clubs of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s with their elegantly dressed patrons have given way to peep shows. Fine restaurants and legendary movie theaters share the spotlight with rock club body-hurling "mosh pits" frequented by leather- and tattoo-clad youths.
Yet Hollywood is fighting back, and often successfully, as unlikely warriors take to the streets: citizens, nearly half of them elderly, fed up with city hall's neglect. They have formed United Streets of Hollywood (USH), a clearinghouse for crime-busting tactics, lobbying efforts, and graffiti cleanup. USH isn't an umbrella for typical neighborhood watch groups, although it represents over thirty neighborhood watch and homeowners' organizations with thousands of members. USH deploys nightly foot patrols that peacefully confront dealers, prostitutes, and gang members head on.
Los Angeles has the fewest police per capita of any American city: A mere seventy-two hundred officers watch over a population of 3.5 million spread over 467 square miles, which include Hollywood. Los Angeles' gang members alone number more than 250,000. Hollywood is particularly difficult to safeguard due to its high visibility, annual influx of more than fifteen million tourists, and heavy, twenty-four-hour traffic. Hollywood's rowdy nightlife attracts partyers from all over Southern California. A mere eight patrol cars, backed up by a gang unit and a narcotics unit, cover the borough. Though well-respected, the Hollywood police are severely outnumbered.
BEGINNINGS
Typically, neighborhood groups form when street crime in an area becomes highly visible--the people who live there reach a breaking point and are compelled to do something.
The first such Hollywood resident was Virginia Charon, age seventy-two. Armed with sheer tenacity, she founded the Hollywood Sentinels, the first watch group to employ foot patrols. "I had tried for twenty years to organize a group to force dealers and prostitutes out of our area," Charon says, "but no one was willing to take them on."
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