Watts Neighborhood Council Board Member Laisa (Chica) Caldwell was quoted in an LA Times article on violence in Watts saying she would not live anywhere else, because Watts is not equal to crime. It’s not the only story in Watts.
The article sites these statistics:
Nearly 42,000 people live here today, making it more than twice as dense as the city of Los Angeles. In the 1940s, the neighborhood was predominantly Black. By the mid-1990s, Latinos were a slight majority. Now, Watts is 70% Latino and 27% Black, according to census data and Times analysis.
But the 22 men and women who were killed in Watts in the first 11 months of 2021 belie the neighborhood’s demographic makeup. Sixty-four percent of the homicide victims are Black; the remaining 36% are Latino. All were shot to death, except for one man who died of stab wounds.
Read the whole article: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-03/in-watts-a-rise-in-homicides-follows-years-of-declining-violence
Image credit: Chica Caldwell is president of the Nickerson Gardens resident advisory council. “I feel safe, because I empty my trash at 11 p.m. and nobody bothers me at all,” she says.(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)