Above are the 12 neighborhood zones Mayor Villaraigosa’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development deems most violent in terms of gang activity. As outlined in his State of the City address this week, four new neighborhood zones (Panorama City, Watts, Southwest, and Rampart) were added as part of an overall re-structuring of the city's anti-gang program.
The city's existing programs, L.A. Bridges I and L.A. Bridges II, will be phased out under the city's restructuring of its anti-gang programs in favor of targeting these 12 zones, deemed "the most violent neighborhoods," according to the Daily Breeze.
All of the zones will receive money to fund programs “that’ll target people re-entering these communities from jails or substance abuse centers," a spokesman for the Mayor tells us. "Or [the money] would create school activities or add more mentors. It'll be used for an array of things, but the point is that it's not just about adding more police officers.” Not everyone is happy about the Mayor’s allocation of the funds, however, with the Daily Breeze reporting that anti-gang proponents in South Bay feel shunned by the shift in focus on certain zones.
And yes, the mayor did tell Fox News that "by focusing on those 12 areas, other parts of the city could see an increase in violence."
"It's a possibility. It really is," the mayor said. "We're going to target our resources smarter and better. So, yes, there may be areas where (crime) goes up and it goes up high enough and then becomes a significant area on the numbers -- then we'll have to reexamine. But, right now, these areas were picked ... because on the numbers, the gang crime there is four times greater than the rest of the city."
· Anti-gang funding ignores South Bay [Daily Breeze]
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