A detailed look at LA's uptick in violent crime, revelations in the Panama papers, accessing porn has become much easier and that ubiquity is having serious effects.
Pacoima residents, police say rising crime comes amid broader gains
As Los Angeles confronts rising crime rates for the second year in a row, residents in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Pacoima are hoping that hard-fought-for gains against gang violence will prove decisive in the fight against crime.
Just a few years ago, the San Fernando Valley was a bright spot, scoring big gains in reducing its gang-related violence. Many pointed to the hard work of local community groups, law enforcement, concerned parents and faith groups. Residents saw it as a sign that the area - long plagued by gang-related crime - had turned a corner.
But lately, Pacoima, like other places in L.A., has seen an uptick in violent crime. And that's caused some to ask where the community is headed next.
'It was a huge eye-opener'
On a recent afternoon at the San Fernando Gardens housing project, ten boys played basketball on a court.
"Now people can actually go out and walk around and play basketball," said Jaime Zombrano, 17, as he took a break from playing with his friends. The fact that the teens were out on the court was proof that things were getting better from times when he was a kid in the neighborhood, he said.
"Back then you wouldn't be able to do it because parents would fear that their kids would be robbed, shot or whatever the case may be," said Zombrano. "I saw uncles and friends just dropping, just passing away and I didn't want that, their lives were ending so fast."
Now, he said, the community was "more united."
But lately, the area has been hit again by violence. Last October, a 15-year-old was shot and killed on the block in what police described as a gang-related shooting. Zombrano said the slain teen was a former classmate of his.
"It was a huge eye-opener," said Zombrano. "When that happened, I wasn't allowed to go out for about two weeks. I would go to school and then come right home."
Police identified the 15-year-old as Willy Barrios, shot in the head at close range by two suspects in the early hours of October 26. An investigation is still ongoing. The October shooting is part of a rise in violent crime in Pacoima. At the Foothill Division – which also covers La Tuna Canyon, Lake View Terrace, Shadow Hills, Sun Valley, Sunland and Tujunga – violent crime is up about 30 percent from last year, and up 60 percent compared to 2014, according to statistics ending in March.
Improving relations
The October shooting in Pacoima prompted a rare meeting between local police and neighborhood residents, said Fernando Avila, Community Relations Officer at the Foothill Division.
"We wanted to let the public know, to give them a little information about the investigation and where it was headed and what we still needed help from the public to identify," said Avila. "Once you let people know that you care, then they're more willing to help."
The meeting is part of larger efforts to strengthen community ties, according to Avila.
Those ties have been tested over the years. The officers in the 1991 Rodney King beating came from Foothill. And, more recently, during a 2012 arrest of a female motorist in Pacoima, officers were caught on camera slamming her to the ground after she had been handcuffed. The incident led to the removal of the local division commander.
But police have worked hard to improve relations, which also aids in the fight against crime, said Foothill Sergeant Stephen Gomez. The Foothill Division also uses predictive software and real-time data to get officers to focus on high-crime areas – information they then can take into the field.
"Community-based policing is a concept which has been around for a long, long time. And we exercise it at all levels, from our patrol officers [who] we try to talk to about getting out of their cars, talking to people, engaging people," said Gomez. "Some people have bad impressions of the police, so we're trying to change that and it just takes time."
In response to the recent rise in crime, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced plans last April to double the number of officers in the city's Metro teams to hit so-called hot spots throughout Los Angeles. The use of the Metro teams has drawn criticism by some for undermining community relations because it relies on officers who aren't based in a specific geographic area, but Gomez said the strategy has been effective in the Foothill Division.
"Just the mere numbers of having officers out here will tend to knock down the crime numbers, at least short term."
The area also has several gang injunctions, including one that includes the block near San Fernando Gardens where last October's shooting took place.
'Their world starts to change'
For artist Manny Velazquez, reducing crime is a long-term investment in Pacoima and it's about changing the whole neighborhood environment.
"There were more bars here than there were churches and schools," said Velazquez, 56, standing in front of an unfinished art mural outside Pacoima's City Hall. "This is a community in transition."
To him, the mural of a proud woman and rushing water brings a reminder of a forgotten history and also a hint of the changing neighborhood: a metro stop is scheduled to open in coming years, and plans to revive the business district are underway.
The art is also part of his three-decade-long anti-gang work in the community reaching out to youth.
"You work with them, instead of throwing rocks, and say 'you know what dude? Let's replace that aerosol with a pencil and then a brush and then we'll get you back to aerosol,'" he said. "You start giving them all this information and all of a sudden their world starts to change."
Rising crime rates should be addressed, said Velazquez, but people should also take the long view and see the progress in an area with a complex history between residents and police.
"A lot of things have happened here but as residents and community folks we've managed to live through it, work through it and we're here today," he said.
What's behind LA's rise in crime rates?
For the second year in a row, violent crime is up in Los Angeles. Through March, homicides rose 24 percent compared to the same period last year. Overall, violent crime – which includes homicides, robbery, aggravated assaults and rape – is up 13.4 percent, according to LAPD data.
The latest trend breaks from more than a decade of falling crime rates in the region.
Experts note that L.A. is still charting rates well below what they were in the 1980s. They urge a longer view of trends to understand the full context of what's happening in the city, where violent crime is affecting neighborhoods and communities differently.
But is the rise cause for concern?
A panel of experts joined Take Two's A Martinez to explore some of the explanations behind why this is happening now and what's being done about it.
Charis Kubrin is professor of criminology, law and society at University of California, Irvine. She also co-directs the Irvine Laboratory for the Study of Space and Crime.
Angela Hawken directs the Swift, Certain, and Fair Resource Center for the U.S. Department of Justice and is a professor of economics and policy analysis at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.
Jody David Armour is professor of law at the University of Southern California and a Soros Justice Senior Fellow at the Open Society Institute’s Center on Crime, Communities and Culture.
Some roundtable highlights:
Charis Kubrin on analyzing the data:
"If you compare to the last couple of years, things aren't looking so good and we should be concerned. If you do take the longer term time frame, and consider what crime rates have done in comparison to 20-30 years ago, things aren't as bad as one might predict...a lot of these questions don't just depend on the time frame but also the unit of analysis you're focusing on...I think it's important to acknowledge the trends at each of these levels. I think for the city as a whole...the last two years have not been great for the city. But for the last 20 years, L.A. has seen an unprecedented decline...so LA overall is in a very good position."
Jody David Armour on how this compares to the longer view of the city:
"As a result of the consent decree, we moved toward less aggressive policing strategy and at the same time crime continued to dip, continued to go down through 2000 into early 2011, 2012, 13, right? And so it shows that we could change the relationship between the police and the community, not have necessarily very aggressive policing and still have reductions in crime. So my concern is, how this data will be interpreted politically as a call for more law and order, harsher policing, longer sentences or to stay the course that we've been so successful at for all this time..."
Angela Hawken on release strategies contribution to crime uptick:
"Our present release strategies really do set up people for failure...In many states, prison release strategy is $40 dollars and a bus ticket. For individuals who have spent sometimes years in custody, haven't made a decision in years, someone's telling them when to shower when they will eat and how long they may eat for. Suddenly, they're on the streets, how long is that $40 dollars going to last? And what do we really expect on Thursday, when they've been released on Tuesday and they've run out of money by Wednesday morning...it's such a shortsighted strategy. To release someone like this who has absolutely no resources directly into the community, to think that they're going to succeed and a week later if they have mental health issues, for example, they're right back into custody...just a slight change in resource allocation can make all the difference."
To hear the full roundtable discussion, click the blue play button above.
International criminals, politicians could have a rough week, thanks to the Panama Papers.
A massive data leak from a Panama-based law firm is shining new light on a secret financial underworld — one where dirty money goes in and comes back untraceable on the other side.
To an outside observer, the law firm Mossak Fonseca might seem like your standard global wealth management company.
But a deeper look into the 11.5 million leaked files reveals that the firm appears to have acted as a middleman for many unsavory characters, including embezzlers, thieves and more than one hundred politicians and public officials from around the world.
Tim Johnson is a reporter and editor for The McClatchy Company and is one of the few American journalists given access to the files. He’s followed the paper trail of Mexican tycoon, Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantu, who worked with the law firm to move at least $100 million.
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
SoCal's air quality agency gets a new pollution regulator
Last Friday, the Southern California agency in charge of managing smog and pollution in one of the worst regions in the country when it comes to foul air, voted in a new leader.
The Air Quality Management District, or AQMD in Southern California, voted unanimously to put Wayne Nastri in charge of the district's goal to implement the most ambitious plan to address air pollution in decades.
Former head of the EPA enforcement on the West Coast under George W. Bush, Nastri also worked as an industry consultant and lobbyist, which raises concerns for many environmentalist groups concerned that the new executive will be inclined toward business interests in his new position.
Nastri's appointment comes about a month after the AQMD board sparked controversy when it fired the agency’s previous head, Barry Wallerstein, who held the position for over 18 years.
Sharon McNary, who covers infrastructure for KPCC, joined us to talk more about Wanye Nastri's history and what he has to bring to the table when it comes to effective pollution regulation.
Can having unlimited access to porn negatively affect you?
Smartphones, tablets and televisions with internet access give us the ability to obtain any kind of information we seek almost instantaneously, but they also place a winding rabbit hole of content at our fingertips.
That includes a wide breadth of sites sharing pornography, which some men report has negatively affected their body and relationships.
Belinda Luscombe, editor-at-large at Time, recently published “Porn and the Threat to Virility,” and she tells Take Two about a man named Noah who discovered porn online at 9 years old. By age 15, he was watching it almost constantly. When he was a senior in high school and had a girlfriend, he discovered he was unable to perform sexually when a person was directly in front of him.
“He at first thought it was nerves, but it continued for six years,” Luscombe said. “He came to believe that he had what’s called, “porn-induced erectile dysfunction,” which means that he’s watched so much pornography from a very young, and sort of impressionable age that his body responds to pornography rather than to real people.”
While she said that “P.I.E.D.” is not a medically recognized condition, she said a large quantity of men report the same problem, and once they stop watching porn their functionality returns. She said there’s now a movement online of men advocating for others to “quit porn.”
Luscombe also shared some other insights into how porn is impacting people.
On sex education:
Often there’s a bit of a vacuum around sex ed, and so porn becomes this default form of sex ed because the kids are seeing it. They’re seeing it on the internet. They’re seeing it a lot. They often can come to believe that the way porn stars do sex, is the way that regular people do sex.
Did you come across the effect porn has on women?
I think it does affect women. Women are much less likely to watch porn. They are again, more unlikely to get “addicted” to porn — to find that they watch it all the time, although that does happen. The effect on women seems to be that guys expect a different sort of behavior in the bedroom.
Should parents be thinking about talking to their kids about porn even in their teens to let them know what to expect if they run into this?
The young men who had these issues really urge parents to talk to their kids, and I think it would be wise too.
Hey ladies: This TV writer's lab could be for you
Two organizations are combining forces to help female writers who are eager to break into Hollywood.
Women In Film, Los Angeles, and The Black List are teaming up to create a television lab for female writers. The lab will take place in August, but they are on the lookout for participants right now at blcklst.com and WIF.org.
Kirsten Schaffer, executive director of Women In Film, and Franklin Leonard, founder of the Black List, join host Alex Cohen.