The Nitty Gritty and L.A. Weekly aren’t the only ones to see Compton Unified’s appalling handling of parents’ push to transfer control of an ailing elementary school into the hands of a charter operator for what it is
COMPTON—A recent editorial by The Sacramento Bee that ran in yesterday’s edition of the Press-Telegram hits the nail on the head in terms of the less than professional way in which the school district has handled a group of local parents and their push to transform an elementary school on the state’s “worst” list using the new Parent Trigger legislation.
The opinion piece written by the Bee’s editorial board calls on Gov. Jerry Brown and his newly appointed state Board of Education to initiate regulations pertaining to certain aspects of the law that are effectively allowing Compton Unified School District to, as the editorial points out, more or less cheat parents of their rights under the new law.
CUSD waited a full six weeks to respond after parent organizers turned in a petition on Dec. 7 with about 270 signatures of parents whose kids attend McKinley Elementary School and support the school’s being taken over by a charter school operator. Under the Parent Trigger legislation, the district is supposed to respond within 60 days. Although it responded within the 60-day time frame, there is no reason for a response to have taken as long as six weeks.
The nature of the response is also suspect. As we reported on Jan. 20, parents were required to visit the school campus last Wednesday or Thursday to verify their signatures in person — a completely unnecessary situation that put parents face-to-face with some of the same school district staffers who parents claim have been harassing them and their children. Not only that, but the parents were required to show photo I.D. and resign a second petition to illustrate that their signatures were valid. If parents did not verify their signatures in person, CUSD assumed the authority to strike their names from the petition.
While some parents did indulge the school district on its outlandish demand, dropping verification forms into a ballot-type box during a process that the Los Angeles Times described as having enough security to pass for a ballot recount or a Hollywood awards show, roughly 60 parents boycotted the process in a show of solidarity. Last Monday they held a press conference denouncing the district’s actions.
Parent Revolution, a nonprofit education reform group that assisted and guided the parent organizers in gathering signatures last fall, said the district’s actions are out of line. Many of the parents work and could not come during the set hours. Others are undocumented and feared deportation.
“What the district is doing is very wrong,” Lorena Bautisa said during the press conference, according to the LA Weekly. “They’re violating our rights. We’ve already signed the petition, and that’s it.”
The editorial wastes no time in calling out the district’s head-scratcher of a move to both further intimidate parents and drag out the process.
“What? As the parents’ pro bono legal team has pointed out, the district already has parents’ names, addresses, phone numbers and signatures on file. Why can’t Compton Unified do what any other school district or county clerk does: Compare their signatures to the school’s existing enrollment documents and verify petitions immediately? We’re talking 270 signatures (at a school of 438 students), not thousands,” the editorial reads.
“At worst, the district’s action to date amounts to harassment; at best, it is unnecessary delay.”
We couldn’t agree more. And given the intimate knowledge the Nitty Gritty has of how CUSD conducts business as usual, we’re going to go with both harassment and unnecessary delay.
Let’s hope that if parents in other school districts elect to utilize this law that was designed specifically so that they might have a say in their children’s education and how to fix a very broken public education system, those districts choose the high road and refrain from resorting to the self-serving antics of CUSD.
To handle the issue as the local school district has only causes its top priority to remain crystal clear: Money.
Blatantly apparent is that more important to CUSD than the quality of education students receive is the state funding the district receives for each child who attends school each day. Once the school is taken over by a charter operator, the district will lose the funding attached to McKinley students, who this school year number 438.
We have two words: simply shameful.
Just as the district’s former district assistance and intervention team stated in its final overall analysis of the district, which was scathing, the district is much more focused on adults and adult issues than it is focused on the main reason for its existence in the first place — educating kids.
NOTE: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that none of the parents visited the school to verify their signatures.
We’ve noticed that very few of our readers click on the various hyperlinks we feature in most, if not all, of our blog posts.
This is somewhat puzzling for us because we include the links to provide our readers with further, more extensive information; link back to older posts on the same topic being covered in a post that comes later in a series on that particular topic; provide definitions of legal jargon and other words; and, finally, to illustrate that we have done our homework and that which we cite as fact can be backed up.
It has dawned on us, however, that some of our readers may not be as Internet savvy as others, and these individuals may not be aware of the presence of the hyperlinks or how to use them.
Hyperlinks are typically denoted by stylizing the text that a reader can click to open up a new webpage or be redirected to a new webpage. This is most often done by highlighting the text using the color blue and underlining it. It can also be accomplished by using a different color for the text that is linked or by bolding said text.
The Nitty Gritty uses underlines to denote a clickable link. Regardless of whether the text is black like the rest of the text in the blog or if it is blue, anything that is underlined can be clicked. Simply scroll the mouse cursor over the underlined text and click away.
As an example, we will provide you with the precise definition of a hyperlink courtesy of TechTerms.com. While we have cut and pasted the definition below, readers can open in a new window the TechTerms.com webpage featuring the definition by clicking the underlined word “hyperlink.”
Go ahead. Give it a try!
A “hyperlink” is “a word, phrase, or image that you can click on to jump to a new document or a new section within the current document. Hyperlinks are found in nearly all webpages, allowing users to click their way from page to page. … When you move the cursor over a hyperlink, whether it is text or an image, the arrow should change to a small hand pointing at the link. When you click it, a new page or place in the current page will open.”
We should also mention that in some cases, clicking linked text in a Nitty Gritty blog post may not take readers to a new webpage, but instead initiate a download of a document in .doc or .pdf format. Such links, however, will be denoted with text explaining that the link is a download.
Now that we’ve got that settled, we hope to see our readers taking advantage of the various links we take the time to add to ensure our readers are able to fully grasp that about which we are blogging.
Sweep conducted at various county locations, including at least one in Compton, yields arrests of Gardena gang’s alleged shot-callers
A multi-agency taskforce has arrested 11 reputed members of a Gardena-based gang, including one man wanted for three murders and one attempted murder, authorities said.
The arrests were made last Wednesday, Jan. 25, during raids conducted in connection with an 18-month-long methamphetamine trafficking and murder investigation, according to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.
The Sheriff’s Department teamed with the Gardena Police Department and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to conduct the joint operation, the Los Angeles Times reported last Thursday, Jan. 26.
Sheriff’s Lt. Wes Sutton said the overall investigation initially stemmed from a probe of a 2008 murder, according to the Times.
“It involves a few different murders that this gang has been involved in over the years and narcotics trafficking, along with several assaults, robberies and burglaries,” Sutton told the Press-Telegram. “Basically, this street gang is a criminal enterprise that’s been operating in the Los Angeles County area.”
Search warrants were reportedly served before dawn last Wednesday at 12 locations in several area cities, including Compton, El Monte, Gardena, Harbor City, Long Beach and Los Angeles. At one location near 168th Street and the Harbor (110) Freeway, police used an armored vehicle and had firefighters on hand.
The 11 people arrested reportedly belong to a gang known as Gardena 13, prosecutors told the PT, and police said they include the gang’s top members.
“Our whole goal is to take this gang out of business — to dismantle this gang and the leadership of this gang,” Sutton told the PT.
Luis Erasmo River Garcia, 27, is among those arrested. He is charged with three counts of murder with a special circumstance enhancement of multiple murders, as well as one count of attempted murder, according to the PT. The criminal complaint includes additional special circumstance allegations that Garcia used a gun and is a member of a gang.
Garcia allegedly killed three people and seriously wounded a fourth in the aftermath of a fight that broke out on Aug. 10, 2008, at the intersection of Imperial Highway and Western Avenue, prosecutors reportedly said.
The names of the remaining individuals who were taken into custody during the raids were not immediately made available.
Almost $100,000 in cash, several pounds of methamphetamine, a number of vehicles and a rifle were recovered during the operation, authorities said.
The arrests came just a week following a major operation targeting another street gang, Lennox 13, which yielded 27 arrests stemming from an 18-month investigation into a racketeering ring allegedly operated by that gang, according to the PT.
Judge denies request to delay upcoming citywide elections until conclusion of impending trial over at-large voting
COMPTON—Citing flaws in expert analysis illustrating that voting in Compton is racially polarized, a judge earlier this month denied a request made by the plaintiffs in a Voting Rights Act suit against the city to postpone the city’s upcoming municipal elections.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones tentatively ruled on Jan. 18 that the plaintiffs failed to present enough evidence to warrant pushing back the upcoming primary and general elections, the Los Angeles Times reported. Jones said she would take the matter under submission and planned to issue a definitive judgment later that week.
The plaintiffs, three Latinas who claim that the city’s at-large election system is racially polarized and effectively dilutes the voting power of the city’s Latino population, hoped to have the elections delayed until after the trial. Should they prevail, the city would be required to change its current election system to one that the court deems fair and equitable to all of the city’s residents.
As we reported on Dec. 11, the case was filed under the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, which states that at-large election systems illegally violate the civil rights of protected classes of voters, in this case Latinos, if it can be proven that voting is racially polarized and that candidates representing the protected class are unable to win elections.
While Latino candidates have run for office in most of the city’s elections over the past two decades, a Latino has never been elected to office in the city of Compton, where they represent more than 60 percent of the population.
Although attorneys for the plaintiffs presented statistical data and analysis from academic and demographics experts illustrating that Black voters typically cast their votes for Black candidates, while Latino voters typically cast their votes for Latino candidates, the judge cited inconsistencies in the analysis and described one of the experts as having “sketchy” credentials.
“I did not have sufficient evidence to decide on the likely success of the merits,” Jones reportedly said. “The balance of harm did not weigh in favor of the plaintiffs.”
The Latinas are hoping that the court will mandate that Compton change its election system to one that is district-based. The Times reported that experts for the plaintiffs provided evidence illustrating that should the city switch to a district-based system, it would be possible to establish a district with a high enough density of Latino voters to enable a Latino candidate to have a fair shot at winning an election.
Joaquin G. Avila, an attorney for the plaintiffs, expressed disappointment over the judge’s decision, according to the Times.
“We thought we had a compelling case,” he told the Times, adding that he does not believe Jones’ ruling on the request to postpone the elections will have a negative impact on the upcoming trial.
The city contends that Compton’s Latinos do not suffer from vote dilution and that the disparity in representation is a direct result of Latinos failing to participate in the electoral process.
Both City Attorney Craig Cornwell and Deputy City Attorney Anita Aviles said that voting is not racially polarized in the 10.2-square-mile city.
Aviles said that analysis has shown that the 2009 election would have yielded the same results even if the city had held the elections by district rather than at-large, according to the Times.
She also reportedly noted that should the plaintiffs prevail at trial, the city’s charter mandates its at-large election system, meaning that in order for the city to amend the system, the matter would have to be put on the ballot for voters to decide.
Voters are heading to the polls this year to pick the next 1st and 4th District council members.
COMPTON—A man was shot to death yesterday near the campus of El Camino College Compton Center, authorities said.
The victim was identified by the county coroner’s office today as 20-year-old Lynwood resident Vincent Crawford, according to the Press-Telegram.
The shooting took place Thursday at about 5:40 p.m. in the 1200 block of East Artesia Boulevard, Compton Sheriff’s Station Lt. Hiroshi Yokoyama told the PT.
The former college is located in the 1100 block of East Artesia.
No arrests were made, nor was any suspect information immediately available. It is not yet known if the shooting was gang-related or if the victim or the suspect or suspects are Compton Center students.
Anyone with information about the shooting is urged to contact the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500.
Those who wish to remain completely anonymous can call the LASD’s anonymous crime tips hotline at 800-222-TIPS (8477) or Compton Sheriff’s Station’s anonymous crime tips hotline at 888-COMPTON (266-7866).
We’ve been on a miniature pseudo-hiatus of sorts for about the past week or so, and if you’ve missed us, then we’ve got good news for you: A slew of posts are on their way as we play catch up with the latest Hub City news over the next couple of days.
We thank you for your patience during our respite and are looking forward to being back in action.
“And the truth is, you can’t hide from the truth. And the truth hurts, because the truth is all there is.” –Moloko
COMPTON—The L.A. Weekly is reporting that school district officials are requiring parents who signed a petition to hand control of McKinley Elementary School over to a charter school operator to verify their signatures face-to-face with school personnel during a strict two-day time-slot.
The on-campus verification requirement was issued as an ultimatum, according to the Weekly. If parents do not come to McKinley and verify their signatures between the hours of 8 a.m. to noon and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 26, and Thursday, Jan. 27, their names will be eliminated from the petition.
The Parent Trigger legislation that is allowing the parents to secure decision-making power in terms of reforming the low-performing school makes no mention of the school district’s ability to remove parents’ names from the petition if parents do not verify them in person.
The district is considering shuttering McKinley and consolidating its student body with another CUSD elementary school or middle school in order to overcome the district’s ongoing budget deficit. Last night’s meeting was aimed at providing McKinley parents with information on what will transpire should the district’s move to close the school receive approval from the school board.
Ismenia Guzman, a McKinley parent who signed the Parent Trigger petition and attended the meeting last night, said that approximately 30 or 40 parents were in attendance when the ultimatum was issued.
“They told us that for those parents that signed the petition, we will receive a letter by mail explaining and giving two days — the 26th and 27th, and they mentioned the times the school is going to be open — for us to come in, look at petition, say is that really our kid and did we really sign the petition,” Guzman told the Weekly.
The Weekly postulates that the demand is likely the result of opposing complaints from both supporters and foes of the new Parent Trigger law. While the school district has not responded to complaints filed by parent organizers, the state Board of Education and the state Attorney General’s Office are investigating the harassment claims against Parent-Trigger foes and school district employees. And parents last Friday filed official complaints with the U.S. Department of Education regarding the already partially substantiated allegations that their children’s teachers, who oppose the move to go charter, are harassing the young students on campus.
Following allegations of harassment from parent organizers and those who signed the petition, parents against reforming the school offered up complaints that parents were conned and coerced into signing the petition and that a nonprofit education reform group that guided parent organizers through the signature-gathering process had lied to parents who signed the petition.
Led by the school’s PTA president, her associate and a pastor, all of whom have children that attend McKinley, opponents claimed that 100 of the 261 parents who had signed on to the reform movement had later signed a second petition requesting their names be removed from the first one because they were mislead as to the initial petition’s purpose. To this day, none of the opponents have been able to produce this alleged second petition to remove signatures, and only 12 parents who signed the initial petition told parent organizers they wanted their names removed.
Some of those who removed their names have since re-added them, and at least an additional nine new parents have signed the pro-charter petition, parent organizers said.
The Weekly reported that neither Compton Unified School District’s interim superintendent nor McKinley administrators were answering the phone the several times that the Weekly attempted to contact them this afternoon.
Meanwhile, opponents of Parent Revolution, the nonprofit that assisted McKinley’s parent organizers and guided them in the petition-circulating process, continue to come out in droves denouncing the group as a sham backed by corporate charter companies looking to make money using the Parent Trigger legislation to increase the number of public schools to be transferred to charter operators’ control.
A recent Nitty Gritty commenter, Caroline Grannan, who describes herself as one of Parent Revolution’s “sharpest critics,” alleges that Parent Revolution “was founded by charter school operator Green Dot” and is “masquerading as a grassroots parents organization.” She said the group has “ample funding from an array of billionaires and corporate titans.”
Parent Revolution was actually started by Green Dot’s founder, Steve Barr, not the charter itself, and is an extension of the grassroots Parent Union, which was described in 2009 by the Los Angeles Times as “a Green Dot spinoff that Barr envisioned as an independent, assertive alternative to the PTA.”
Barr is chairman of Parent Revolution’s board of directors.
That same Times story noted that funding for the movement’s efforts to improve public education was at that time originating from Green Dot, philanthropist Eli Broad, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Service Employees International Union.
It should be noted that Parent Revolution selected Celerity Educational Group as the charter operator to take control of McKinley. We have been, thus far, unable to establish any direct ties between Celerity and Parent Revolution or Green Dot.
Activists fighting to turn McKinley Elementary into a charter school say teachers are intimidating their children in retaliation for their parents’ push for school reform
COMPTON—The plot has thickened yet again in the hotly contested Parent Trigger school reform debate rooted in the Hub City, with activists who support severing an elementary school’s ties to the local school district alleging that school employees are using intimidation tactics on their children.
Both The Associated Press by way of The Sacramento Bee and KABC Channel 7 News reported yesterday that two parents have filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights alleging that teachers are harassing and attempting to intimidate their children because the parents are active in efforts to turn McKinley Elementary School into a charter school.
Marlene Romero and Hebert Hidalgo filed the intimidation charges last Friday. They are among a group of parents who last year began organizing under the guidance of an area education reform group, Parent Revolution, to turn McKinley into a charter school using the new Parent Trigger law.
The Parent Trigger legislation is a recent byproduct of last year’s Race to the Top federal schools funding competition. It was added to spice up the state’s bland R2T application, though California still failed to secure any funding.
The law grants parents whose children attend some of California’s lowest performing schools decision-making power in turning those schools around. If parents at a school can obtain signatures from a majority of parents whose kids attend that particular school or its feeder schools, the school district operating the school site must heed to the decision of parents, in this case releasing the school into the control of a charter operator.
Going charter is one of four options parents have when using Parent Trigger.
A total of 62 percent of McKinley parents signed the petition, which aims to transfer control of the school beginning next fall to Celerity Educational Group, an L.A-area charter school operator.
If the Parent Trigger effort is carried out successfully, McKinley’s current teachers would lose their jobs.
While the parents’ claims of teachers harassing their children have thus far only been partially substantiated, it is reasonably conceivable that teachers distraught over the prospect of becoming unemployed might be resulting to such behavior.
In her complaint, Romero states that her third-grade son’s teacher has convinced him that charter schools are “a bad thing.” She writes:
“A CNN reporter came to my house in November 2010 to talk about the charter school. My son, Ivan Hernandez, heard us talking about charter schools and said we shouldn’t support them. After the reporter left, Ivan told me on the way to school that he hated me because I was changing his school to a charter which would be a bad thing according to Ivan’s teacher, Mr. Victor Tellez.
“In December 2010, Mr. Tellez asked to speak with me when I was at Ivan’s school. In his classroom, Mr. Tellez told me that he’d worked in two charter schools and did not like them. He said the head of one charter school spent $600 of school funds to buy shoes. On YouTube, Mr. Tellez said I would ‘regret having supported Celerity when your child is rejected by them.'”
Romero, who is among the parents interviewed in the YouTube video below (she’s wearing a CSULB hooded sweatshirt), said she had previously filed a formal complaint with Compton Unified School District, but the district had as of yesterday failed to respond.
Hidalgo’s son has allegedly been similarly treated. His father writes in his complaint:
“My son, Angel Sanchez, got to his classroom late one day in December 2010 because he was in the bathroom. His teacher, Dr. Miranda Pesa, sent him to the office. The office sent him back to class. Dr. Pesa then said to Angel that his parents are there complaining about education but can’t get him to class on time. She said to Angel that his parents have a big mouth and that they’re crazy. Since then my son has said he no longer wants to be in her classroom.”
Both teachers reportedly failed to return phone calls from the AP for comment.
Now that complaints have been filed at the federal level, CUSD appears to be taking action.
In a prepared statement, acting Superintendent Karen Frison said any harassment complaints would be fully investigated and, where warranted, appropriate action would be taken by the district’s Human Resources Department.
“We have zero tolerance for harassment,” Frison said in the statement. “We take all allegations of harassment seriously, particularly if those allegations involve a staff person or teacher employed by our district. We have district policies with respect to harassment, and we enforce those policies.”
Frison said the district has yet to be contacted by any outside agency that might be investigating the allegations.
The AP reported that DOE spokesman Jim Bradshaw said that the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights is evaluating the complaints to determine the exact nature of the allegations and if they’re appropriate for the office to investigate.
McKinley parents who are remaining steadfast in their determination to turn McKinley into a charter school have complained of harassment and intimidation by school employees since they first went public with their plans to execute Parent Trigger reforms.
It wasn’t long after the parent activists held a press conference late last year to produce the petition and announce that they would be the first to take advantage of the new legislation that the L.A. Times reported that some parents who had signed on began to back-peddle.
Opponents of the push to transform McKinley into a charter began to shout from the rooftops that some 100 parents who had previously supported the effort had asked for their names to be removed from the petition. The opponents have not, however, been able to back up such a claim with any proof. Regardless, the L.A. Times ran with the story.
Parent organizers said they re-contacted all 261 parents who signed the petition and only 12 said they wanted their names removed, some of whom have since re-signed. An additional nine new parents have come forward and signed, as well.
It was also these opponents, who include PTA President Cynthia Martinez, parent Pastor Lee Finnie and parent Karla Garcia, who, after parent organizers complained of being harassed, claimed that parents had been conned and coerced into signing the petition, which they said parents were led to believe was related to campus beautification efforts, and that Parent Revolution representatives lied to parents.
The L.A. Weekly, which had “unfettered access” to the signature-gathering activities of parent organizers and Parent Revolution, reported that the publication witnessed no incidence of parents being lied to, misled or coerced in any way, suggesting that the opponents’ allegations are baseless and unfounded.
Officials including former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa publicly denounced any attempts by anyone with ties to the school district or employed at the school to harass or intimidate parents into striking their names from the petition.
Another L.A. Times story soon created even more confusion when it reported on the state Board of Education’s investigation into allegations that school officials were harassing parent organizers in a manner that suggested the probe is actually into alleged wrongdoing by Parent Revolution.
This is not the case, said Board of Education President Ted Mitchell, who told the L.A. Weekly that “the Times got it backwards.”
An AP story based on the incorrect Times story further spread misinformation about the probe nationwide, stating falsely that the investigation was into petition-drive misconduct.
In the snarled aftermath that ensued, Schwarzenegger while he was still governor requested that the state Attorney General’s Office conduct a probe into parents’ claims of intimidation at the hands of school district personnel.
Ben Austin, president of Parent Revolution, said the harassment actually started when parents first began organizing.
“Instead of standing with the parents in their troubled school district, they are responding with harassment, intimidation and lies,” Austin told the AP. “It’s disappointing but not surprising. Defenders of the status quo are not used to being challenged.”
Austin told the AP that parents have been peppered with lies and intimidating misinformation by Parent Trigger opponents, including that special education students would not be allowed at a charter school, immigrant parents would be deported and parents would be charged tuition.
A vast majority of students who attend McKinley are Latino.
In one of several comments he posted on YouTube (his appear on the second page of comments) in reference to the above video, Tellez states that Celerity will discriminate against and reject special education students. This is simply not true, as the Parent Trigger legislation would require Celerity to enroll all students currently attending McKinley.
Tellez conveniently deleted one of his comments on the YouTube page, and according to the LA Weekly, that comment included the threat Tellez made to Romero regarding her son being rejected by Celerity. The alternative weekly publication reported that it obtained a computer printout of the YouTube comments page that had been printed prior to Tellez’s deleting his incriminating post.
CUSD has a financial interest in maintaining control of McKinley. Should the district be forced to relinquish the school, it would lose the funding it receives based on students’ average daily attendance for each student who would continue to attend McKinley once it becomes a charter school.
Teachers and Parent Trigger opponents allege that Parent Revolution stands to make a large profit from its work with McKinley parents and its selection of Celerity to serve as the charter operator, though exactly how the nonprofit, which is partially funded by Bill Gates, would turn a profit remains a mystery. These same detractors cite Parent Revolution’s alleged ties to millionaire right-wing politicos as proof and claim that the group is nothing more than a front for corporate charter companies.
While McKinley is among the state’s bottom 10 percent of schools in terms of performance, meaning McKinley students’ test scores rank among the lowest 10 percent in the state, CUSD points to the school’s 77-point gain on the Academic Performance Index over the past two years as proof that something is working at McKinley.
About a decade after the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department began policing the streets, the Hub City is now boasting its lowest homicide rate in nearly half a century
COMPTON—Once infamous for its sky-high murder rate, the city of Compton has become a much safer place to live, with homicides falling by 16 last year, according to preliminary year-end crime data for 2010 released Monday by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Compton Sheriff’s Station, which patrols the city of Compton and several county unincorporated areas in and around Compton, recorded 26 murders in 2010. That’s compared to 42 murders in 2009 and 78 in 2005. These numbers represent a 38.2 percent decrease between 2009 and 2010 and a 67.2 percent decrease over the five-year period from 2005 to 2010.
Murder isn’t the only crime to see its annual rate slashed. Part 1 crimes were down almost across the board last year compared to 2009, with burglary being the only category to see an incease (up by 8.9 percent) from 2009 to 2010. Forcible rape fell by 30.2 percent; robbery fell 1.1 percent; aggravated assault fell 8.5 percent; larceny theft fell 7.3 percent; grand theft auto fell 17.3 percent; and arson fell 50.1 percent.
According to the preliminary data, the total number of reported crimes in 2005 was 5,473. That number fell to 5,392 reported crimes in 2009, and last year, it further decreased to 4,986 reported crimes. This reflects a 10.2 percent decrease in reported crimes between 2005 and 2010 and a 7.5 percent decrease from 2009 to 2010.
Residents citywide have been saying for the last year that they haven’t felt as safe as they currently do in years. And they’ve been taking advantage of this renewed sense of ease in droves.
Today, the city’s parks are routinely packed with children at play. It is not unusual to see both children and adults riding bicycles through neighborhoods and walkers and joggers out pounding the pavement. Kids playing in front yards and seniors chatting with neighbors as they tend their gardens are also no longer uncommon sights.
During a town hall meeting last May regarding the potential return of the Compton Police Department, resident Carolyn Blake said she and her children ride their bikes down her street free of fear. Ten years ago, that simply wasn’t possible.
“Before, we could go nowhere,” said Blake, who’s called Compton home since 1958.
Other citizens have spoken similarly, including Lifelong Compton resident and City Council critic William Kemp.
“We have restaurants where we can sit outside and eat,” he said. “We couldn’t do that 10 years ago. I see people jogging in the morning and the evening. That didn’t used to happen. Our parks are filled with children. We almost don’t have drive-bys and home invasions” anymore.
A common theme emerges from sentiments such as Blake’s and Kemps’: While crime is still a serious issue, a feeling of safety has blossomed in Compton. It is something that appears to have. in some ways, restored freedom to a community that not so long ago was imprisoned by the terror ruling their neighborhoods at the hands of gangbangers and gun-toting criminals.
While an increased sense of safety cannot be solely tied to crime levels and the effectiveness of law enforcement activities, the numbers released by the Sheriff’s Department do go a long way in painting a strong correlation.
The community’s increased vigilence and willingness to work with the Sheriff’s Department to solve crimes rounds out that picture.
Compton Station Capt. Diane Walker told the Los Angeles Times that over the last decade, the community has slowly begun to trust the department as is apparent in residents’ increased willingness to provide information on crimes that have been or have yet to be committed.
“This is the culmination of a long relationship,” Walker told the Times. “Residents aren’t just calling us for emergencies anymore. They give us tips, they help us in crime prevention.”
An updated version of this post will be up later today featuring a more in-depth look at the Hub City’s tumbling crime rates, which the Nitty Gritty considers to be monumental.
COMPTON—How could anyone do something that would effectively shut down opportunities for inner-city youth to participate in constructive, fun, supervised activities?
That’s a question that for months has perplexed Jim Hawkins, a local senior who for nearly half a century has dedicated his life to bettering the lives of area youth.
His local community-based think tank is calling out state and local officials for what it cites as their failure to ensure that the government is operated in a manner that is in the best interest of the people relative to Hawkins’ assertion that they are preventing Compton kids from having fun, according to an undated release recently obtained by the Nitty Gritty.
Hawkins, founder of the International Think Tank, issued the release, which was addressed to state Attorney General Kamala D. Harris, state Deputy Attorney General Michael Witmer, the office of 4th District Compton City Councilman Dr. Willie O. Jones, city of Compton Community Redevelopment Agency Director Kofi Sefa-Boakye, city of Compton Planning and Economic Development Director Derek Hull, city of Compton Interim Parks and Recreation Director Homer Post and Brig. Gen. Mary Kight, the adjutant general for the California National Guard.
The California National Guard, the state Attorney General’s Office and the city of Compton are all cited for their efforts to “block” Hawkins’ 45-year-old youth-based nonprofit organization, Sports Spectacular Charities for Children and Families. The organization specializes in offering fun, healthy sports-related activities and competitions for youth ages 0 through 18.
The release accuses the agencies mentioned above of taking away “hula hoops, Big Wheels (and) Frisbees from children and making life more difficult for those who volunteer to help make their lives better.”
This past summer, through partnerships with the city, school district and other nonprofit organizations, such as Isaac Asberry’s TIP, or Teen Intervention Program, Sports Spectacular held a series of athletics-based championship competitions for children of all ages, such as hula-hoop contests, sack races and Frisbee tosses.
This photo flier depicts Compton-area youth participating in a Sports Spectacular Championship Game Day held last year at Compton Center to celebrate Halloween. Photo courtesy of Sports Spectacular.
The allegation stems from the city and state’s recent eviction of Sports Spectacular and several other nonprofit organizations from the city’s National Guard Armory property located at 2320 N. Parmalee Ave. behind Centennial High School. The nonprofits had legally binding arrangements with another nonprofit, N.I.C.E., to occupy and operate on the property. N.I.C.E. formerly had control of the property, though that arrangement was subsequently dissolved and Assemblyman Isadore Hall III successfully enacted legislation allowing the city to formally lease the property on a long-term basis from the state for specific uses.
The city’s most recent plan for the property was to relocate the City Yard there.
Hawkins attempted to fight the eviction through legal actions, asking for an extension until he had the means to move the organization’s headquarters elsewhere. The final deadline, however, passed before he was able to identify a site to which the nonprofit could be relocated, as well as obtain the funding necessary to remove all of Sports Spectacular’s equipment from the property.
His subsequent petitions to the state were not handled as he had hoped, resulting in the undated release sent via email to the Nitty Gritty on Jan. 14.
Noted within its text is Harris’ pledge when she took her oath of office on Jan. 3 to “ensure that state law is on the side of the people.”
“Taking hula hoops, Big Wheels (and) sack races away from our children is not the way to go,” states the release.
The release asserts that Harris is falling short of living up to her pledge by not addressing the circumstances surrounding Sports Spectacular’s eviction. It then goes on to list 10 suggestions, which appear to be at least in part Compton-specific, that Harris could and should consider acting upon. If fulfilled, the think tank believes the suggestions would yield a government that actually does work in favor of those being governed.
The suggestions are:
1.) Ensure that government at all levels be required demonstrate meaningful participation and involvement of its citizens at all levels;
2.) Encourage that all representatives and staff are ethical and representing the best interests of their constituencies;
3.) Revise the laws that allow elected officials to hold two public jobs at the same time (for instance, Mayor Eric J. Perrodin’s serving both as mayor of Compton and as a county prosecutor with the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office);
4.) Revise laws to prevent the California National Guard from ignoring local citizens and circumventing participation of citizens at every level;
5.) Revise laws that permit young people to be taken advantage of by ruthless administrators in group homes, foster homes and alternative schools; social workers; probation officers; and those who dispense medication, etc.;
6.) Revise laws that permit young people to be shot in the back multiple times by law enforcement;
7.) Develop new laws that prevent elected officials from ignoring the meaning of their sworn oaths of office;
8.) Prevent elected officials from operating local governments as if the governments were their private businesses;
9.) Revise guidelines to better prevent government officials and staff from stuffing ballot boxes and mishandling their volunteer elections staffs;
10.) Revise laws to permit young people to travel to and from school, home and the store store safely.
For additional information on Sports Spectacular Charities for Children and Families and the many services it offers for youth in the greater Compton area, as well as in cities across the nation, visit www.voay.net/.
Hub City Nitty Gritty 