Butts Addresses Violence in Public Housing; Blames Media for Perception

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

August 20 -- When a shooting spree broke out in the Pico Neighborhood in May, the violence spurred a debate that spilled onto the editorial pages of the local press. The gunfire, authorities agreed, was gang-related, but could it be tied to public housing?

Last week, Police Chief James T. Butts, Jr. gave board members of Community Corporation of Santa Monica -- which oversees 1,200 units of low-income housing in the City -- what amounted to a crash course in Crime 101.

Butts discussed what triggered the violence that recently plagued some of Community Corp's buildings and dismissed the perception that there is a direct link between public housing and the crime and violence critics blame the non-profit agency for bringing into their neighborhood.

The candid low-profile dialogue -- which was not attended by the public or any other media -- marked the first meeting between the chief and Community Corp officials, who sought advice on how to better prevent crime and violence in their buildings and how to turn around the perception that it is widespread.

Eliminating crime and the perceptions it fosters, Butts and the board members agreed, is no easy task. Crime and its symptoms must be tackled long before it erupts, and the perception that crime is tied to public housing requires a change in the media mindset, which both Butts and the housing officials blamed for fostering the connection.

While admitting that CCSM has “occasionally had a problem” with a tenant, Board Secretary Patricia Hoffman said that the press always links neighborhood violence and crime with a CCSM building, no matter how tenuous the tie.

“It feels that way, that no matter what happens in the country, it’s put in the proximity of our buildings,” said Hoffman. “And when kids win a music scholarship nobody says, ‘Oh, she lives in a CCSM building or she lives next door.”

Board Treasurer Paul DeSantis concurred, saying the “biased” image of a rundown crime infested building is summoned up by the media despite the fact that CCSM “over maintain our buildings. We do a better job of it than most other people.

“There is a real anti-low-cost-housing bias, so you’ll frequently see in the paper, ‘Well there was shooting near a Community Corporation building,’ which was half a block away," DeSantis said. "You don’t see, ‘Well there was a shooting near a Roque and Mark building,'" he said referring to the local property management firm.

“One of the reasons we’re happy to see you here is we’re doing our darnest to police our own buildings and cooperate," De Santis said. "And I am not sure what more we can do to deal with this perception or deliberate bias that you continuously see in the papers, and on flyers and everywhere else.”

Butts said he has seen that kind of bias go on for his three decades in law enforcement. Inglewood, a city where Butts formerly worked, was and still is pigeonholed in a similar fashion by newspapers whenever any crime remotely close to it is reported, the chief said.

“This is what papers do,” Butts said. “They maintain images that everyone can relate to, because they invent these images, and when they want to show you how bad something is, then they go back to that tool box” and use the stereotype.

“We all have jobs to do, and we all have certain things that make our jobs easier, and if you have an image that already works, you don’t have to write 15, 20 words. You say one word, and you get what you're hinting at. I’m sorry, that’s just the way the media is.

“In the press there is a tendency to focus on easy storylines, and that’s not just the press, but people who have their own orientation, their own view, and take the target of opportunity and exploit it for what they want to use it for. There is nothing you can do about that. Just do the best that you can.”

Butts said that media don’t give a sense of perspective, and that it is important to put the recent spate of shootings in the Pico Neighborhood in context. “The reality is that in the last 10 years crime had gone down," Butts said.

In Santa Monica, part one crimes -- robbery, rape, murder, burglary, auto theft, aggravated assault, arson and larceny -- dropped by 55 percent since 1993, Butts said. The drop, he added, "has given us the opportunity to focus on other things that bother us.”

To give a sense of perspective, Butts said that ten to 12 years ago it wouldn’t have been “unusual to have 6 or 7 people murdered in one year that came from the Pico Neighborhood,” but that this year “we haven’t had one murder.”

Drugs, the chief added, play a central role in the violence surrounding the Pico Neighborhood.

“The reality is that a good amount of violence that occurs in Pico is centered around a turf war for street sale of narcotics," Butts said. "These are low numbers, but they tend to bring in that element of violence.”

Asked what the police can do to prevent the sale of drugs, Butts said “drug crimes are most analogous (to the old conundrum), 'If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it did it make a sound.” Butts said drug deals that go unseen don’t get reported and therefore can’t be stopped.

How can police, the board members asked, help the housing agency deal with its bad apples?

“It would be inappropriate to involve the police in civil evictions," Butts said. "You don’t want the police to evict people from apartments, that’s for the landlord to do. Our focus in Pico and any neighborhood is Prevention, Intervention and Enforcement, and when we get to the E in the word PIE, then everything has really fallen apart.

“Jail and imprisonment seldom makes a better person. Our enforcement is aggressive and very resolute, and about 90 percent of the time it leads to incarceration, or imprisonment. And while it provides temporary relief, the reality is that eventually those offenders are going to go back (on the street). Where they’re going to come back to is where mom and dad, and brother and sister live.

“And now it becomes very problematic because then you wonder if you end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy," Butts said. "Once they’re back in a residence, in a neighborhood, the neighbors don’t feel secure. You have limited opportunities once you’ve been to prison, and people tend to fall back into patterns of behavior.

“I think this is where it becomes problematic for Community Corp, because the reality is everybody has to have somewhere to live. And even people who get incarcerated are going to come back to their own community. But your responsibility is to say enough is enough and evict. Now, that may sound harsh, but that’s what you have to do.”

Board member Cece Bradley said the problem of youth crime and violence lies partially with bad parenting and asked Butts what parents can do to regain control over a problem child.

“These things that happen in our buildings are repeated and repeated, like a revolving door, and yet the parents go, ‘Oh, I don’t know what to do with him.’ That’s unacceptable anymore to me,” said Bradley. “We as parents need to learn to put the foot down and put it up somewhere and get our kids off the street with their gang bangers or whatever.

“Is there any kind of program for us parents, counseling, so we can feel strong enough to say to them, ‘Enough is enough. You’re not going to go there anymore?” Bradley asked.

Butts said there are many non-profit organizations that can help, and that good parenting is a vital element in any intervention model.

“In many instances the parents, or the siblings, become enablers, not because they desire to, but because they love their son so much, and their hearts break so much when their lives go bad.

“Until they’re educated about what they are unconsciously doing, they tend to help maintain an environment where it is easy for someone to make bad choices. The reality is there are some people who no matter how much love and support they get will choose to do what they will, and those are the people who usually end up in prison.”