"You don't have to tell me about the drug dealers on Las Palmas and Yucca. I can see them," Severino said. "But I don't know what goes on in your apartment corridors. You do. If you don't tell me or my officers, we don't know."
He told the residents that if they don't band together, they can't win, and that it takes hundreds of small gestures, including replacing burned-out light bulbs, to make it harder for criminals to operate.
City officials at the meeting got an earful from the residents about muggings of the elderly, inadequate security in their densely packed apartment buildings, too much city money spent on palm trees and not enough on protection.
As the police were preparing to launch their major push, they learned of a new problem. On Thursday night, Joe Shea, leader of a local Neighborhood Watch group, told two LAPD officers in a squad car on Yucca that some 18th Street Gang members of his acquaintance had seemed particularly edgy lately.
The officers said that in recent days, a rival group, the White Fence Gang, had been spray-painting over 18th Street's graffiti with its WF symbol. That could be a sign of a gang war in the making, officers said. It is too early to tell for sure.
Hot Spots for Violence
No Los Angeles neighborhood is a stranger to crime, but there are parts of the city where the four most serious types of violent crimes--murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault--are particularly acute. The map below show the neighborhoods in each of the LAPD's four bureaus that registered the highest totals in 1993 for each of those crimes. Those neighborhoods, known as "hot target reporting districts," have come under special scrutiny in a new LAPD study, which is intended to identify those districts and craft strategies for thwarting their crime problems. Each reporting district is identified by its number in bold type.
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Reporting district
1799: 119 Robberies
909: 208 Aggravated Assaults
1635: 6 Murders
241: 180 Aggravated Assaults
246: 15 Murders
111: 221 Robberies
497: 10 Rapes
1258: 10 Rapes
1846: 334 Aggravated Assaults
1804: 12 Murders
1256: 12 Murders
1266: 249 Robberies
1241: 10 Rapes
1414: 7 Murders
667: 7 Murders
636: 183 Robberies, 13 Rapes, 243 Aggravated Assaults
936: 14 Rapes
