Compton Becomes 4th California City to Face Bankruptcy

Compton Becomes 4th California City to Face Bankruptcy

I have extensive knowledge of this derelict municipality located at south end of LA city. The tawdry south LA ghettos merge quite seamlessly with the Compton ghettos. Compton is one of the older inner city LA county burgs, as evident by it's abundant 2500-3000 sq ft teeny home lots with equally puny 900-1000 sq ft homes, most put up prior to World War 2, and many as far back as early 20th century.

Drive thru the Compton's inner core along Compton Blvd or Wilmington avenue, and you see endless rows of bland tenement apt blocks, bleak corner mini-malls, storefront churches, barbers, and a slew of liquor stores with locals and ghetto youth hanging out.  I worked in this hood in 80's and early 90s and there is no more depressing city in CA. Every shop in Compton  has iron-grated windows and wrought-ironwork burglar-proof storefront gratings.  The Compton population back in 80s-90's was almost evenly split between Hispanics and blacks but has trended since then into being a densely-packed latino immigrant zone. Hispanics,mostly recent and older immigrants, now account for 65% of Compton's population.
   The tiny lots and homes of Compton, abundant  in Willowbrook and the area north of Compton Airport, are packed with recently-arrived Hispanic immigrant illegals, as well as older established Hispanic residents. But the cities ruling power structure was long dominated by black politicians, ruling thru nepotism and favoritism, greased by grafts for families and friends of the Compton ruling elite.

COMPTON CRIME STATS:

"Although the U.S. News & World Report does not even list Compton in the "The 11 Most Dangerous Cities" for overall crime rates in the United States,^[35] it contrasts the CQ Press, using data from the FBI's annual report of crime statistics "Crime in the United States 2010," ranked Compton as the 8th most dangerous city in the country.^[36] Statistics will vary depending on how property crimes and violent crimes are weighted in each statistical survey. See Statistical variability."
(wikipedia).

 During the  rein of Mayor Omar Bradley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Bradley_(California_politician), the city was a cesspit of vice and corruption. It got so bad that the state of CA put Compton's schools in receivership, and the tiny, grossly corrupt gang-like Compton Police Force was disbanded in 2000 and the city's policing was contracted out to the LA County Sheriffs Department.
    I once went into the puny Compton City hall bldg to deliver an item and was able to go direct to the 2nd floor Compton City Attorneys Office without a single security guard checking me. The entire Compton City Hall seemed almost empty and deserted.

COMPTON lies within a dense semi-industrialized hub of south LA County and is astride several major freeways, has direct links to major LA metro rail connections, and is right next to the nationally strategic Alameda Transportation Corridor,  which makes Compton's impoverished, corrupt BK status all the more baffling.  There are large modern corporate parks along the 91 freeway, which marks Comptons south boundary, and in the Rancho Dominguez Industrial District which adjoins Compton at the southeast.

At the western margin of Compton abutting Gardena and the 110 freeway there is the older somewhat rust-belt sem-industrial district running thru the LA old imdustrial strip/corridor- old shops, factories, processing plants, warehouses. ect
Compton, being centrally located amid a south LA semi-industrail hub district and astride the Alameda corrdor to the east, doesn't lack jobs for it's 100k residents, especially in warehouse work and small workshops & factories. Problem is Compton city administration and civic culture is extremely corrupt. The level of civic corrution in Compton reduces it to a 3rd wld cesspit.
   During the nascent RE boom in early- to- mid 2000's LA Times was touting Compton as an emerging LA inner city boomtown, with newly built splashy retail malls & shops along Wilmington Ave/ Santa Fe Avenues, and in Willowbrook . However, when the economy went bust in 2008 Compton's fortunes quicky returned to what they were prior to the 2000 decade, a ragged ghettoized hi- crime zone where blacks and hispanic gangs regularly war against each other.




crime gangstas rap music, crips influence in Compton


 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_Outta_Compton 

"The city of Compton as well as southern Los Angeles County in general is notorious for its heavy concentration of gangs and gang violence, such as the Bloods, the Crips, and Sureños, which all originated in the Los Angeles area."
(wikipedia).  
 Back in 1980s and early 1990's  the  Compton rap/ gang culture reached it apogee- Compton gangsta rap culture was widely disseminated throughout the USA. This  gave Compton a nationallly-propagated notoriety and reputation for ghetto rap and gangstas. Most of the notoriety was real and deserved though likely blown up out of proportion by a sensationalist-seeking media.  I was there and was able to observe first-hand the inner workings of Compton's so-called violent gang culture. Actually the more affluent middle class black suburb of North Carson, directly south of Compton, had more instances of black gangsta drug-dealing and rap activity than the impoverished Compton ghettos.

   The real truth is that Compton's hipsters & gangstas weren't confined to the ragged poor Compton ghettos but roamed out to the more prosperous middle class  districts like Carson, Baldwin Park, Ladera Heights, Crenshaw District, Inglewood and Long Beach. They went out to these LA County middle-class black suburbs to party, DJ or to cruise around. After the 1992 Rodney King riot, Compton's black population , like their counterparts all over South-Central LA, started fleeing out of LA's inner ghettos and out to the Inland Empire or CA hi-deserts in search of cheaper homes in( hopefully) nicer suburban digs. 
 Compton then lost much of it's indigenous black hip culture and a good part of it's gangsta rap scene, and is now primarily a densely-populated LA Latino immigrant district.  

More on comtopm crime and gangsta rap cult (wiki)

 The city used to be notorious for gang violence, primarily caused by the Bloods, and Crips. Crime rates had been falling for years following the crack epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s.
 Compton has been referenced on numerous occasions in gang affiliation, gangsta rap and g-funk songs, especially in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, and so has attained an association not only with gang violence and crime, but with hip hop music as well.