Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

In this timely and important book, veteran Los Angeles Times homicide reporter Jill Leovy drills down to the political and cultural realities that explain what she calls “a plague of murders among black men . . . [who represent] just 6 percent of the country’s population but nearly 40 percent of those murdered.” With a focus on police-community relations, Leovy powerfully makes the case that black lives matter by examining the work of an extraordinarily dedicated and effective (white) Los Angeles police detective in solving the brutal murder of the teenage son of another accomplished L.A. cop (mixed-race but self-identified as black).Relating in great detail the circumstances leading up to one murder in 2007, and the steps taken by the detectives assigned to the case all the way through to its conclusion, Leovy manages to imbue Ghettoside with the tension and urgency of a thriller.This book is certain to be controversial in criminal justice circles. Taking her cues from the brilliant homicide detectives she features in the book, Leovy denounces the “stop-and-frisk” tactics so favored by New York police and the proactive, “fix-broken-windows” brand of policing. She (and her subjects) insist that approach places the emphasis in law enforcement precisely where it shouldn’t be, intruding in the community without providing a meaningful benefit and slighting the intensive, time-consuming job of investigating — and closing — the most serious crimes. Ghettoside reveals numerous ways in which serious detective work is given lower priority, even scorned, by senior officers in the LAPD. It’s not a pretty picture.To be clear, Leovy doesn’t advocate less active policing. On the contrary, she makes the point that “prevention” is ineffective and squanders scarce resources. What our inner cities need is more policing, not less — but policing focused on investigating serious crime and locking up the perpetrators. Only then can the police and politicians expect that members of the community will trust the system.Why is black-on-black murder so prevalent? Leovy explains: “The smallest ghettoside spat seemed to escalate to violence, as if absent law, people were left with no other means of bringing the dispute to a close. Debts and competition over goods and women — especially women — drove many killings. But insults, snitching, drunken antics, and the classic — uninvited party guests — also were common homicide motives.”The key phrase here is absent law. “Eighteenth-century rates [of homicide] among settlers on the wild edge of the American colonies were almost exactly those of South Central blacks in the twenty-first century.” But what about the common perception that gangs are at the root of crime in the ghetto? “Fundamentally,” Leovy contends, “gangs are a consequence of lawlessness, not a cause. . . Without law, people use violence collectively to settle scores and right wrongs, and commonly refer to violence as their own law. Wherever law is absent or underdeveloped — wherever it is shabby, ineffective, or disputed — some form of self-policing or communal justice usually emerges.”Black-on-black murder isn’t just tens of times more prevalent than homicide among other ethnic groups — it’s also far less likely for the killers to be caught. Almost always, “everybody knows” is the lament in Watts and other heavily African-American ghettos in Southside L.A. and other cities. This phenomenon, the refusal of eyewitnesses to offer evidence, is the excuse typically used by police for failing to solve crime. As Leovy shows, however, a truly persistent detective can only be slowed down by the prohibition against snitching, not stopped. The best police detectives in Southside L.A. clear upwards of eighty percent of their cases, while the overall clearance average is on the order of forty percent.The clear though unstated takeaway from Ghettoside is that lack of empathy on the part of most police officers is at least one of the roots of the problem. It’s difficult not to wonder why police academies, like medical schools increasingly today, don’t offer intensive training in empathy. (Certainly, police applicants should also be screened for the potential for empathy in the first place.) A cop who is sensitive to the human dimensions of crime cannot fail to rush to the side of a dying murder victim, if only to ask who did it. But every one in a group of beat cops sent to such a scene in one real-world example in Ghettoside neglected to do so. Instead, they devoted themselves to pushing back bystanders, doubtless including eyewitnesses to the crime. That’s lack of empathy. This is how the overwhelming majority of African-American inner-city residents conclude that, to the police, black lives don’t matter.There may be no one who knows more about murder in Southside Los Angeles than Jill Leovy. She displays both the deep understanding of one who is intimately familiar with the reality as well as the breadth of historical insight that comes with reading the work of pioneering criminologists. For nine years, beginning at the turn of the century, she covered the topic for her paper. In 2007, she launched “The Homicide Report” online, a searchable database of details about all murders committed in L.A. County.For anyone who wants to understand the problems of urban America, Ghettoside is essential reading.

No point burying the lede: "Ghettoside" knocked me out. The book was so meticulously researched, the details so exacting (yet never extraneous), they revealed the author's myriad gifts of storytelling. There are only a few nonfiction books each year as comprehensive as "Ghettoside." Often I found myself wondering, "How does the author know all this?" I don't think I'm giving anything away, but in the afterward Leovy answers my question, explaining her reporting strategy, which was to embed with police precincts, go out on calls, and interview participants over a multi-year period. I would think the true challenge with this type of book is to wrestle the huge amount of source material into a coherent narrative, which Leovy handles masterfully. To summarize, the author focuses on homicide in the South Central part of L.A. during a period when it was much more prevalent (1990s) than it is today. She describes murders in an excruciating way, never pulling punches. But "Ghettoside" isn't simply a catalog of murders. It focuses on the efforts of the homicide detectives to solve these crimes. Everyone is described in a way that keeps him or her from becoming a stereotype. We learn that the investigators are dedicated and self-sacrificing. Some of their biggest challenges are a lack of support from the L.A. Police Department and a lack of cooperation from witnesses to the crimes, who very understandably fear for their own lives for being "snitches." One of the detectives' own children is murdered, victim of a gang dispute, and the resulting investigation and trial make for riveting, if gut-wrenching, reading. What I appreciated so much about "Ghettoside" is that Leovy gave a quick bit of historical context at the beginning and then launched into the narrative, never editorializing. At the very end of the book she gives her opinions about what fueled the crime, and her conclusions are as refreshingly well thought-out as the rest of the book. The author doesn't lean on the pat answers of gangs and drugs. While these elements contribute to the violence, Leovy gives the reader a much more nuanced explanation, showing how ethnically similar groups living in close quarters throughout the world, with limited access to financial mobility, have resorted to similar types of violence. Essentially they take the law into their own hands to settle disputes. Leovy turned all of my preconceptions about South Central, mainly based on Hollywood movies, on their head. She gives so much life to the survivors, the witnesses, and the detectives. They all have the same motives as the rest of us: to live in safety. It is only a small subset within a small subset that commits the homicides. Even within this subset of young black males are many who want to escape the life but don't know how. What was so appalling about the circumstances described in the book was how little media attention the deaths received but also how little help the detectives received when they were just trying to do their job. I'm a white guy from the Midwest with no connection to murder in LA, but I devoured "Ghettoside" and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in true crime or life in America today.

I was listening to Radio 4 book of the week. This was on the play list and the 30 minutes I heard sounded interesting. I missed the rest as do shift work. So I ordered this book on line, it arrived quickly. The book tells the story of high number of young black men murders in America, specifically in Los Angeles. This story is interweaved with stories of american policing policy over the years and uses detectives characters to show individual police attitudes to the local communities their serve and coping strategies when dealing local communities and gathering evidence in attempt to solve murder cases. It's a tough book to read but opened my eyes shows, it shows the less glamorous parts that not shown regular cop shows. I will definitely read it again. It's useful for sociology, politics, history students or anyone interested social history.

Excellent

Superb nonfiction novel will appeal to fans of David Simon

I found Ghettoside to be an amazing realtime look into gangs and gang related killings. It comes as no real surprise the grim statistics of black on black killings, in fact anyone who is unaware of this problem would shock me more.How to correct this, to reduce the incidents and the overall gang mentality is a long term issue. It does though have to start at street level. What's the real driving force here, money and money from drugs. Reduce and/or stop that, well perhaps stopping it is an insurmountable task!Overall a very interesting read, a little long at times but a gripping insight into gang life in. L.A.

Extremely well written, reads like a thriller, I read it cover to cover. It is research, relays the facts comprehensively yet the stories are woven into a tale which I could not get enough of.The background and characters were so real,portrayed warts and all. I saw these crimes and the people involved in a different light after reading this book, and can say this puts a human face on something inhuman. Race riots, police conduct, victim-reactions, hard working detectives and historical context, are all dealt with here. Brilliant work.