I Drove Through Compton and Watts Ghettos. This Is What I Saw.
For this video, I drove into south Los Angeles to visit two of that city’s notoriously dangerous and blighted neighborhoods - Watts and Compton. These neighborhoods are famous for their history of violence and are an example of a true inner city hood in one of our nation’s largest cities.
I took Alameda Blvd from the south and pulled into south Los Angeles at around noon on Wednesday, October 28, 2020. As we’ll see later, at one point, I made a wrong turn and almost got into a bad situation.
Compton and Watts are both due south of downtown LA. They’re right next door to one another - Compton being about 8 miles from downtown and Watts about a mile closer.
Both of these neighborhoods gained fame for their overall malaise. In the 1960s, Watts became a household name due to a series of riots. Compton was known primarily as a central point for inner city gang violence and black-themed hip hop and rap in the 1980s.
For decades, both of these communities were working class black neighborhoods, but quickly became landscapes infested with youth black violence, shootings, drugs and gangs.
As we’ll see, both are now primarily hispanic communities.
We’ll begin in Compton first, drive through some streets there, and then head north into Watts.
Compton’s issues began in the early 70s, and it became so dangerous here that this place had the highest crime rate in the whole state of California.
This south central LA community became famous in the late 80s when local gangsta rappers used Compton as a setting for their rap culture. They glorified gang activity, and soon, this community was torn apart from gang violence, primarily from the bloods and the crips.
Then, in 1992, during the Rodney King riots, there was significant rioting and burning here, which made Compton even worse.
Around the turn of the century, the hispanic community began moving in, and then there was a lot of gang violence between the black and hispanic gangs. 72 people were killed here in 2005, making this one of the most violent cities in the US.
Today, crime has stabilized in Compton. The LAPD actually gave people $100 checks in exchange for guns with no questions asked. More than 7,000 guns were turned over. As it stands now, things are much more peaceful for this city of nearly 100,000 people. It’s two thirds hispanic, a third black and one percent white. More than 1 in 4 lives below the poverty line here. Home prices average $450,000 here if you can believe it.
Here’s the rest of Compton.
If there’s any doubt as to how hispanic south LA has become - while driving through Compton, two hispanics on horses came down the middle of the road. This is 7 miles south of downtown LA.
Now, we’re going to take a quick drive to the neighborhood of Watts, a community of about 35,000 people.
In 1965, Watts saw six straight days of riots, looting and burning after the black community mistook a rumor that a black woman was mishandled by the police. 34 people were killed.
Between 1989 and 2005, police reported more than 500 homicides here in Watts, most of them gang-related and tied to wars over control of the drug market.
The high crime and drug-related violence resulted in a huge exodus of black americans from Watts. African Americans fled this area, and moved to other communities in California, or fled the state completely. Many wound up in the southern US.
Like Compton next door, the neighborhood of Watts is two thirds hispanic and a third black. It is one percent all other races combined. Many of the trees have been torn down and replaced with landscaping which resembles mexico. Average home prices here in Watts are about $350,000. This home on Grape Street, shockingly, is selling for $700,000. Grape Street is one of the most famous gang hoods in all of Los Angeles. The asking home price for this home is evident of how outrageous the cost of living in California is these days, and an example of why people are fleeing this state. $700k for that house in an LA ghetto, people.
And speaking of gangs, as I was driving through a Watts housing project, I came upon a group of people who were loitering in the road and stopping cars. I decided I should not continue down that road, as it was likely I would look out of place, especially driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a camera mounted on the roof.
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