Anaheim CA police shooting protests and riots- commentary

Hundreds protest over Anaheim police shootings, city officials call for investigation | Fox News

I have roamed thru Anaheim here and there. It has a dense and growing Hispanic second generation/ anchor offspring population (53% of cities PPL)which is quite brash and loud. There are tawdry illegal immigrant tenement zones at the gritty central and northern edges of the city and where the cities gang problems are most rampant, but Anaheim's Hispanic ppl are now mostly US born second generation. Many are educated and speak English well. Many harbor resentment of the city's power structure and the Anaheim Police Dept, which are still mostly white. This second generation Hispanic crowd. mostly teens and young adults, are the brash and loud elements one saw in the riot clips crowding Anaheim City Hall, demanding justice.

 Anaheim is a fairly large city of 350,000, diversified in racial makeup though Hispanics are now the majority ( 53% Hispanic, 30% white 17 % other races.) Anaheim is not quite the poor ragged 3rd world slum-zone like most inner LA City districts.  It has some diversity in the economy, with a good mix of retail, industry, and tourism (Disneyland). There are large stretches of ghetto tenement zones in the city's old central core areas, and Anaheim has trended recently toward sprouting vast mega-clusters of piled-on apt units and condos, epitomized by the gigantic urban razed re-development zone called the Platinum Triangle( just west of Angels Stadium).  Into these block-like units are packed the cities large population of lower white collar retail and sales workers, as well as lower-working class  immigrant families.

Anaheim has it's tawdry seamy side: seedy corner malls in which you can find  tucked-away strip cubs, bikini bars, endless hotels/motels , and persistent prostitution activity along miles of Beach Blvd to the south of Disneyland.

Anaheim is all in all a bland urban seamless mis-mash of  endless sprawling apt districts and malls galore, with some landmark urban recreational frills like Angels stadium, Arrowhead Stadium (Ducks hockey) , and Disneyland.  But stray a  bit out of this zone even a few miles and you run into older industrial/railroad corridor districts  into which are crowded the cities dense immigrant /illegal immigrant PPL.

 In one of these seedy apt barrio districts Manual Diaz was shot by Anaheim police while fleeing and/ or resisting arrest and/or reaching for a weapon.( It will be a long-drawn out investigation taking a year or likely longer, and the endless lawsuits will take even longer to revolve). Anaheim city, PD, and the majority of Anaheim PPL who want law and order will help bury the shooting investigation, and the band plays on.

I once went to one one these sprawling apt Barrio complexes and saw numerous idle youths, the offspring of immigrant illegals, ganged up around their apt units, not doing much. This is the seeds of trouble- restless congeries of idled teens and  young adults hanging around all day in apt complexes.

Anaheim and North Orange County's immigrant population differ a bit from their LA cousins. Here in the North OC they are a bit more sassy, smarter, and bolder than their LA bretherin in the depressed inner LA ghettos. There is a higher quality of work available in the large North OC industrial belts of South Fullerton, East Anaheim Canyon industrial dist, Placentia, and in the old Southeast Anaheim railroad corridor district. These employ large numbers of recent immigrants, including any number of illegals, in such sweatshop industries as furniture making, garment shops, food processing, warehouse, chemicals/ paint shops, pallet & lumber yards, and metals fabrication.

The higher quality and opportunities for work available to immgrants in  the large north OC industrial belt( which runs along a 1 to 3 mile-wide belt along the 91 freeway),  imparts a sense of smugness among these latino immigrants, gives them a highly-developed sense of their perceived rights , and makes them more likely to be aggressively confrontational with the police.


 http://www.ocregister.com/articles/dunn-364896-officer-police.html