Jordan Downs

The 20-year anniversary of the beating of Rodney King passed pretty much unnoticed in Jordan Downs. I visited the Watts housing project this weekend because I was curious about King's legacy in a neighborhood where, 20 years ago, everybody seemed to know someone who had been roughed up King-style by the cops. Was King a hero or a hapless victim? Had the events set in motion by his videotaped beating ? from street riots to police reform ? changed life much in this beleaguered corner?

Responding to a spate of gang violence at Los Angeles' Jordan Downs housing project, city officials are launching an unusual program that links surveillance cameras to stepped-up police patrols, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Thursday.

Los Angeles city leaders Friday touted the installation of seven surveillance cameras at the Jordan Downs housing project, saying the high-tech equipment already has played a role in making the Watts complex safer. The cameras, mounted on utility polls, beam images to three police units in the area, allowing officers to keep a constant eye on activity and respond more quickly to incidents, police said.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Wednesday a $14.5-million grant to partially refurbish eight Los Angeles City housing projects, some of which critics charge have turned into slums. The award to the city Housing Authority, which operates 21 low-income projects largely with federal funds, was announced at a news conference at the Jordan Downs project in Watts--which will receive $3,539,100.

What if you can receive more money in welfare benefits than you can take home from a minimum-wage job? What if child care costs more than what a minimum-wage job would pay? What if employers won't hire you because you lack a high school diploma or you have a criminal record? The likely result: unemployment, accompanied by a dependence on the government for everything from housing to health care.

"My granddaddy always told me don't ever stay at a place where there ain't but one way in and one way out." --Charmaine Ridley, resident of Jordan Downs * Residents of Jordan Downs are seething about the installation of barricades that block two of the three roads to the main section of the Watts housing project, an action they say has caused major inconvenience, increased traffic, and generally contributed to a sense of isolation already prevalent in the battered complex.

Confronted with an increasingly turbulent melting pot, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley met Monday with residents of Watts, where an arson fire that killed five Latinos in a housing project has helped propel the issue of race relations to the top of the city's agenda. Bradley at a luncheon praised black and Latino leaders for helping to keep anger over the deadly blaze--which police believe was set by several blacks--from further aggravating racial hostilities.

Ronald Perkins and his neighbors were nearly outnumbered by the consultants and architects who showed up at the Jordan Downs community center. For three hours, they listened as a procession of planners depicted their home as an "island of poverty," and dissected it by "landscape character and typologies." But something puzzled Perkins as he studied the new homes that would replace their decrepit apartments. So when the tenants were asked for their opinions, he raised his hand: "How come I don't see no bars on the windows?"

Police are trying to determine if there is any connection among the killings of three men within four hours late Tuesday and early Wednesday in the Watts housing projects of Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens. The first man slain was 22-year-old DeAndra Turner, who was shot about 9 p.m. Tuesday in the 2100 block of East 99th Place, police said. About 10:45 p.m., 32-year-old Eddie Felton was shot a few blocks away in the 2100 block of East 102nd St.

As word spread that a Latino toddler had become the fifth victim of an arson blaze at the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts, some Latino residents demanded Monday that segregated buildings be set aside for them within the predominantly African-American complex. Standing in front of the charred apartment, Alma Ortega acknowledged that such a move might exacerbate racial tensions between her and her black neighbors.