East 77th St, Florence-Graham

Firestone Park is the neighborhood just adjacent to Avalon Gardens, and like it, also has a pretty bad crime problem. In fact, 67 people have been murdered in this neighborhood in the past four years. Given that that is about equal to the population of this neighborhood, that means that you have roughly a one in 4000 chance of being murdered here on any given year.

It is, in fact, among the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles with a high number of assaults and burglaries as a commonplace in this area.

Of course, when you drive through you might not actually feel the danger and the menace. The neighborhood looks much like Reseda or Van Nuys (which are dangerous in their own rights but not quite on this level). There are lots of older Ranch homes here on tiny lots—often with fences. There is, of course, a Latin flavor to the neighborhood as 90% of the residents are Latino and half of those were born south of the border.

The schools in the area are pretty awful as well. The students at South East High for example, fall a good 300 points below the California average on the SAT, and only 5% pass the math portion of their STAR test. They do a little better in English (like at most schools) but still end up passing only about a quarter of the time. The school has shown some dubious signs of progress, however if you take into consideration the No Child Left Behind standards. After an all time bad year in which they missed 13 of 19 standards, they bounced back this previous year missing only 6 of the standards. Of course, getting close is not really the goal here—it is passing all of them without difficulty like most ordinary schools do.

Despite these problems, there is a positive attitude among residents who live here. I know a couple of people from here and they both say they see signs of improvement in the area. Things are being better taken care of and some businesses have been brought in thanks to Magic Johnson—the Lakers great who has turned into a sort of entrepreneur and advocate for the poor.