Edition: U.S. / Global

Where Fear Rules the Street

Published: June 9, 2003


The three men were middle-aged and dressed as if they had just come from church. One pointed toward a tiny makeshift shrine of flickering candles and wilting flowers that had been placed at the curb in front of a rundown house on Budlong Avenue in South Los Angeles, a vast expanse of neighborhoods that has had its name changed from South Central in a futile effort to improve its image.

South L.A. is still a viciously destructive place. Some neighborhoods are so dangerous that residents are reluctant to leave their homes, even in the daytime. The neat residential streets and the palm trees are deceptive. The owner of a fast-food restaurant told me, "Out here, you're always in danger."

The shrine on Budlong Avenue marked the spot where Londell Murdock was murdered in the middle of the afternoon last Wednesday. Mr. Murdock, a 33-year-old custodian who was married and had two children, was shot to death on his way to work. The gunman, who was 22, also shot two women who were standing on a porch nearby. They survived.

"It's bad," said Andy Rooks, the man who had pointed toward the shrine. "People don't want to come out. Those who aren't working, they might run to the store before 9 in the morning, then go back home and lock up."

"'Cause they know these boys will shoot you," said Mr. Rooks's friend, J. C. Pye.

"If you come out here tonight," said Mr. Rooks, "you won't see nobody." He mentioned that there was a library a few blocks down the street that had a small park behind it. "The children used to play in that park all the time," he said. "Not anymore."

The gunmen of Los Angeles, many of them gang members from South and East L.A., have turned their city into the murder capital of America. Los Angeles, which has a population of 3.7 million, led the nation in homicides last year, with 653. New York, with a population of eight million, had just 584 murders.

On one weekend in the middle of last month, 10 people were shot to death in Los Angeles and 15 others were wounded by gunfire.

The mayhem is concentrated in certain sections of the city, and the result for local residents is heartache, paralyzing fear and a radically constricted lifestyle. About half of all the murders occur in South L.A., and most of the victims are young. Instead of the normal cycle of children growing up and burying their parents, in South L.A. the parents, with stunning frequency, are burying their children.

It is estimated that over the past 20 years some 10,000 young people have died in L.A.'s violence-ridden neighborhoods. Residents who are convinced that no one in those neighborhoods is safe point to the murder on May 28, 2000, of a 20-year-old woman named Lori Gonzalez. She was a bystander who was shot in the chest and head when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. Ms. Gonzalez was the granddaughter of the Los Angeles police chief at that time, Bernard C. Parks.

"The young people have more of a chance of dying here in South Central than in a military combat zone," said the Rev. Leonard Jackson, the president of the Los Angeles Council of Churches. "To say that there's a climate of fear is understating it."

During an interview in his office at the First A.M.E. Church of Los Angeles, he noted, "In certain areas you find mothers placing their youngsters in the bathtub to sleep, or having them sleep on the floor, for safety."

He spoke sadly of several killings that had touched members of his congregation, including the murder of a teenaged boy who was shot to death several months ago just moments after leaving a service at the church. "He was just standing on the street," said Mr. Jackson, "less than two blocks from here."

The minister paused for a moment and an expression of deep sadness crossed his face. "It's time for the community to take a stand," he said. "We're doing what we can here at the church. But this is madness. And I have to tell you, I'm personally devastated by it."

There are many reasons for the chaos in South Los Angeles: parents who have neglected or completely abandoned their young; a ridiculously understaffed police force that has never seriously tried to "protect and serve" the most troubled neighborhoods; the chronic demons of poverty and joblessness.

No one seems to know what to do now. Meanwhile, the dying continues.