Leaving La / California - Asap (Long Beach, San Bernardino: skyscraper, jobs, health)

[Caliguy2007]

Gentrification is what is needed to revive areas that have turned into Ghettos or to prevent areas from turning into another Ghetto.

Los Angeles is a World Class City and should be displayed as World Class,instead of images of Ghettos,Gangs,Crime,Grafitti,etc.

L.A should have a look at what Long Beach is doing.

[Corona]

Originally Posted by dano

Funny you should mention OJ. That tragedy showcased most of the things Pacific has been talking about.

OJ proved once again that money trumps race when it comes to "justice." Take away five high-priced lawyers, a team of jury consultants and a cadre of well-orchestrated "expert witnesses" and you have an average two- to three-week Section 187 trial with a conviction and likely death penalty. On the other hand, the clearance rate for homicides in places like Compton and north Long Beach is frustratingly low for the LA County Sheriffs detectives. Nobody saw anything and nobody knows anything. Thing is, that's not new. That's been the way in crime-plagued urban America for more than a century.

So, in short: rich, celebrity wife-beaters who later kill their ex-spouses can usually buy their way out of prison.

And just to keep things in perspective, adequate policing can make a difference, but it's not a guarantee. Washington, DC, was at one time the city with largest per capita police force in the U.S., yet had the highest rate of violent crime.

[fastfilm]

corona and dano, the insider's gossip is that allegedly a) the driver whose car was sideswiped by the Bronco in his murder scene getaway was bought off immediately so as not to be able to testify; and b) that we're never going to hear a genuine confession until the Rev. Roosevelt Grier makes a deathbed statement: it was he who saw OJ in jail. Grier is a good, good man, and I'm sure he's wrestled with this.

Back to topic: Caliguy, that's actually an excellent suggestion, Long Beach has made a real turnaround in its civic core. However, I believe that the government "culture" currently running L.A. will do everything in its power not to let this happen. Gentrification is counter to their every move, even when it would help residents of all financial strata. Loopholes are made at every available instance to counter this.

Examples where I live: we residents got, after a 7 year effort, a Historical Preservation Overlay Zone to help this part of the Valley be a nice residential place more akin to Pasadena than Panorama City, saving old Craftsman houses and limiting density. So the L.A. City Planning Dept. has, to counter this, done everything in its power to speed up all possible density building in the interim before the HPOZ board is set up and in place. A more citywide example of launching loopholes to counter gentrification would be the presence of uninspected food cart vendors, who sell food with no heating or cooling to preserve same, obtain the food from illicit vats in people's back yards (under trees, with bird droppings) and are responsible for soooo many food poisoning cases in schoolchildren throughout the city. Since this sort of vending is imported from the homel countries of the many illegals, city government wants to "look the other way," and stymied all activists' attempts to get these noisy, dangerous food poisoners off the streets by passing a new law that they couldn't be arrested for breaking our extant laws without a passle of officials including police, and Food and Drug Administration officials all together in person. Why, would you say, with this genuine public health concern, do they do this? The illegal vendors remind their constituency of "back home," (not the USA) and they don't want to seem anti-. Meanwhile, our Los Angeles home is depleted of the safeguards of the rest of the country. Pacificop is right, it is too far gone to correct.

[brian_2]

I still have the mushroomed 9mm bullet that was fired at us (they missed (by a foot or two) thank goodness) when two of us white guys and our coworker Jose were on a catering job unloading our truck in Long Beach around 1992. I hope things are much better these days in LB with less racial hostility and crime. The abundant real estate equity is keeping a lot more people active doing stuff other than grinding their teeth from meth and sending caps of hate into the ether.

[UB50]

Talk about creating your own job... I used to work in an industrial area in Chatsworth. We used to have a little old man we always called the "cucumber man" who used to push a cart with small bags of produce -- grapes, cucumbers, tomatoes, kiwis, whatever was in season. We used to LOVE him! He had all those healthy snacks you can't get out of the vending machines. I think he probably got his produce from the produce markets though. He always sold it pre-bagged and already washed.

[Need_affordable_home]

Originally Posted by UB50

On that violent crime ranking thing that came out a month ago, LA was safer than Orlando, Miami, Tampa, and a bunch of cities in Florida. LA only ranked 250th on the list. New York City ranked even higher. What are the conservatives in Florida doing about those high crime rankings?

Is it true crime is underreported since its so common? Everyone makes LA out to be gang infested. Ive heard alot of bad things about Miami too but not as much about the other FL cities. I supposedly live in a very high crime city but I guess the area I live in is cocooned from most of the crime. Ill be moving to an area with as little crime as possible in OH or WV

[Pacificop]

First, I do appreciate Fastfilm and others who have taken it upon themselves to defend, support and remark positively on my words.

Just for the record, I’m not LAPD or LASO, but that’s as far as I’ll go on departmental identification. But, to blame the cops for the crime is like blaming the doctors for sick people. Are there bad, stupid and inept cops out there? Yes, in every community. How many internal affairs divisions do you see in the school systems ridding our educational systems of drunk, inept and belligerent teachers and professors? Or how about the contractor’s internal affairs division? Shall I go on? The reality is all cops hate bad, inept and lazy cops.

You can blame the overpowered unions for forcing us too keep the ones who are “achieving or meeting standards” but everyone knows he/she is basically a brain-dead-booger-eatin’-moron. We’re stuck with them as part of this free society. But seriously, we do rid ourselves of the rotten apples regularly, we just don’t advertise our failures if they haven’t made the press on their own.

I never brought up race or ethnicity, but since it was brought up, I’ll provide this observation. As I said, I have traveled the United States and some European countries for business and pleasure. One of the most racist places I have ever seen is the Southern California / Greater Los Angles area. The Hispanic versus African American school fights that rise and sometimes exceed the level of a riot, are regular in many communities. As I mentioned before, unless something is truly heinous, it doesn’t regularly rate the newspaper or TV media, because ALL TOO SADLY, it isn’t newsworthy anymore.

This is the comparison I meant in my original post. I see community newspapers from other regions of the United States that report on the name and address of a person arrested for possession of methamphetamines. In that more peaceful region, it is a serious crime. My newspaper couldn’t handle the inundating of press releases were I to send them one regarding every doper arrest. That’s is where I think the distinction lies – by reading the internet newspaper of a quieter society and seeing repots for thefts, burglaries and drug arrests, one could assume they are having the same problem as we are. Their reports are of the crimes that have occurred whereas ours are a mere sampling of the more strange or violent.

To the person who asked if crime is under-reported. You bet it is! With the fear the citizens are living in, they don’t want to report crimes in fear of retaliation. If they do report a crime, because an emergency exists, when the emergency is over and they aren’t permanently harmed, the average response to street cops is that they won’t name the assailants or testify in courts. Honestly, I can’t blame them but it just fuels the circle of violence. I get to go home to another city (I’d never police in the jurisdiction I serve for my own fears), that witness/victim still has to live their. It’s like the whole area is living the battered wife syndrome.

I think in larger metropolitan areas, a great many crimes go unreported for a great many reasons. Whereas I believe smaller communities tend to report their crimes more regularly, although I HAVE NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS THEORY. So don’t blast me for this opinion based on non-scientific observation and my queries with other cops in other regions.

[fairweathergolfer]

Pacificop wrote:
First, I do appreciate Fastfilm and others who have taken it upon themselves to defend, support and remark positively on my words.

Just for the record, I’m not LAPD or LASO, but that’s as far as I’ll go on departmental identification. But, to blame the cops for the crime is like blaming the doctors for sick people. Are there bad, stupid and inept cops out there? Yes, in every community. How many internal affairs divisions do you see in the school systems ridding our educational systems of drunk, inept and belligerent teachers and professors? Or how about the contractor’s internal affairs division? Shall I go on? The reality is all cops hate bad, inept and lazy cops.

You can blame the overpowered unions for forcing us too keep the ones who are “achieving or meeting standards” but everyone knows he/she is basically a brain-dead-booger-eatin’-moron. We’re stuck with them as part of this free society. But seriously, we do rid ourselves of the rotten apples regularly, we just don’t advertise our failures if they haven’t made the press on their own.

I never brought up race or ethnicity, but since it was brought up, I’ll provide this observation. As I said, I have traveled the United States and some European countries for business and pleasure. One of the most racist places I have ever seen is the Southern California / Greater Los Angles area. The Hispanic versus African American school fights that rise and sometimes exceed the level of a riot, are regular in many communities. As I mentioned before, unless something is truly heinous, it doesn’t regularly rate the newspaper or TV media, because ALL TOO SADLY, it isn’t newsworthy anymore.

This is the comparison I meant in my original post. I see community newspapers from other regions of the United States that report on the name and address of a person arrested for possession of methamphetamines. In that more peaceful region, it is a serious crime. My newspaper couldn’t handle the inundating of press releases were I to send them one regarding every doper arrest. That’s is where I think the distinction lies – by reading the internet newspaper of a quieter society and seeing repots for thefts, burglaries and drug arrests, one could assume they are having the same problem as we are. Their reports are of the crimes that have occurred whereas ours are a mere sampling of the more strange or violent.

To the person who asked if crime is under-reported. You bet it is! With the fear the citizens are living in, they don’t want to report crimes in fear of retaliation. If they do report a crime, because an emergency exists, when the emergency is over and they aren’t permanently harmed, the average response to street cops is that they won’t name the assailants or testify in courts. Honestly, I can’t blame them but it just fuels the circle of violence. I get to go home to another city (I’d never police in the jurisdiction I serve for my own fears), that witness/victim still has to live their. It’s like the whole area is living the battered wife syndrome.

I think in larger metropolitan areas, a great many crimes go unreported for a great many reasons. Whereas I believe smaller communities tend to report their crimes more regularly, although I HAVE NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS THEORY. So don’t blast me for this opinion based on non-scientific observation and my queries with other cops in other regions.

You make a very good point regarding the internal affairs division for cops and how this lacks in all these other fields and also how the unions have become so powerful it basically makes firing pis- poor cops impossible.

It doesn't matter to me where you are a cop just the fact that you are and you put yourself in the line of fire/danger every single day as your line of work to protect the community you police in tells me what a courageous, generous person you are. So thank you for that service and I appreciate your sharing your experience with us. Heck even the traffic cops put themselves in danger each day. Cops are treated horribly on top of all of this.

[LC81]

Is there a conceal carry law there for civilians like here in Texas?

[OCCASparky]

Originally Posted by LC81

Is there a conceal carry law there for civilians like here in Texas?

In California? The state of which our "beloved" Senator Feinstein said, "If I could have got 51 votes, I would have rounded them all (guns) up?"

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Yeah--good luck getting a CCW permit in this state.