I live in a beautiful racially mixed neighborhood in LA. A long time ago this was the first Beverly Hills, mansions and limos. Then the city grew all around it and white flight turned it into the place where wealthier African Americans lived undisturbed by the daily humiliations of racial laws which kept them out of the newly designated white neighborhoods. Then the freeway building began, trying to make this sprawling monster of a city accessible again. Several freeways were planned going east west across LA, the routes hotly debated. The one that was supposed to run along the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains through the white neighborhoods was killed by resident resistance, fears that the wrong elements could come in. So there is still no good freeway access to Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. But the major freeway, I-10, was the cornerstone, and after some debate, it was built bisecting the old rich black neighborhood of West Adams, destroying it overnight, turning the northern half of it into an extension of the teeming Koreatown, and the south half into the northern edge of the South Central ghetto.
The riots during the 90s swept freely though this neighborhood, but their traces are gone now. In their place came another wave of gentrification, as whites, driven east by the unholy real estate prices of the beach towns of the Westside, became attracted to the gorgeous and huge turn of the century homes here. And so they poured in. I became part of that wave as well, though I rent, not own. And that might be the big difference here. You see, my white neighbors, motivated primarily by the prospect of "cleaning up this neighborhood" and therefore raising the prices of their homes, and of course "thinking of the children" have been waging a brutal police campaign against the other residents in the neighborhood. They are so chummy with the police that cruisers stop by every few weeks just to chit chat and find out their concerns. They formed a neighborhood association (because obviously before they arrived, there was no community here), which invites cops and DAs to speak of the ongoing war on crime and drugs and so forth.
And most repugnantly, the whites continuously inform on everybody else. As my landlady puts it, "I turn off my light and make my quiet phone calls." Any person of color idling in their car, any group of teenagers, anybody acting suspicious (and that's pretty much everybody here, this is LA after all) gets the cops called on them. Cars are then searched, pockets patted down, names are run through the system and people end up on the ground in cuffs on an old bench warrant, a nickel bag of weed, a permanent market (unlawful tool of vandalism).
Not that it's ncecessarly a racial thing, I remember hearing similar stories when I lived in Venice, from the old timers proudly telling me how they used to call the cops on their mostly white neighbors all the time there, until the home prices began to soar and all the hippies that used to live there became homeless or went elsewhere. The guy who told me the most stories was a handiman who I swear would bring women over to fuck in my bed when I wasn't home. One time the leg of the frame was broken. Explain that, you horny snitching bastard. His own constant petty criminality never bothered him, but he was always ready to inform on a neighbor for the sake of the greater good.
The police love this sort of "community policing," when they don't have to do anything but wait for the phone call to get their probable cause add go stir some shit up, LAPD style, lots of cars parked diagonally in the street, black uniforms, helicopters swooping and blinding everyone with their spotlights. I once asked a cop why they always park in the most obstructive and haphazard way possible, even if there is no emergency. He told me it's part of their training, to impress the public with the urgency and importance of the police. Then he asked me where I lived and began to probe for weaknesses, but was obliged to desist in light of my whiteness.
