Southern California’s government is struggling to provide basic services to a rapidly expanding population spread across a vast area. The City of Los Angeles receives adequate water from the Owens, Feather and Colorado Rivers, as well as small amounts of water from recycling facilities. While the rest of Los Angeles County relies on private power companies, Los Angeles County generates its own electrical energy from fossil fuel and hydroelectric sources. Most other cities in the county (members of the Metropolitan Water District) draw water from the Colorado River and maintain wells and pumps that draw water into ancient underground aquifers. County governments and the federal government have made significant efforts to control flooding throughout the watershed. Many jurisdictions share facilities at Los Angeles’ Hyperion Treatment Facility, which discharges millions of gallons of treated wastewater into Santa Monica Bay each day.
Until 1957, homeowners in Los Angeles burned combustible trash in backyard incinerators, a practice that was adopted to alleviate the spectacular smog attack that plagued the area at the time. has been discontinued. Currently, city sanitation trucks collect thousands of tons of household waste every day and dump it into a large local sanitary landfill. Hills covered with dry foliage in the summer and fall pose a significant fire hazard to the region. Wind-driven fires occurred in Bel Air in 1961 and across large swathes of the county in 1993, causing significant property damage. Therefore, while both city and county firefighters must also deal with potentially disastrous wildfires in addition to their normal duties in urban areas, county firefighters must fight the most costly wildfires. are facing the brunt of this.
Watts Police, 1966 Police search for a man in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in March 1966. It comes seven months after clashes between police and residents that became known as the Watts riots and continued tension and violence in the community. (detail)
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was considered one of the most professional and best-run law agencies in the country until about 1965. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the department prided itself on its ability to “protect and serve” a vast metropolis and a growing and diverse population. Then, in August 1965, riots (or as some called them “rebellions”) broke out in the predominantly African-American Watts neighborhood. The outbreak of arson and looting there was due to a number of underlying economic and sociological conditions and police deterioration. Community relations.
By the early 1990s, the force had one of the lowest ratios of officers to residents of any urban force in the country. Living conditions in South Los Angeles at the time were similar to living conditions in Watts in 1965. Deteriorating relations between police and the community led to another five days of riots in April and May 1992. The African-American driver, Rodney King, was acquitted. The ensuing mass unrest left more than 50 people dead and caused extensive property damage. This riot differed from the Watts Riots in that Latinos also participated.
The Blue Ribbon Commission, convened by Mayor Bradley, investigated the LAPD’s overall operations, including racial and gender bias, external review processes, and hiring and training practices. The commission supported the concept of community-based policing, in which officers spend more time outside their patrol cars and involve local residents in crime prevention. Neighborhood watch programs, in which designated officers meet regularly with community members to combat crime and vandalism, have been successful.
One of the most intractable social problems of the late 20th and early 21st centuries was the problem of gangs and gang violence. There were countless gangs in the city and about 20 separate programs to deal with them. The complaint of most reformers was that much of the money went toward restraint, with limited results, and that the money could have been better spent on intervention, social welfare, employment services, and economic development. One thing most people agreed on was that the city’s efforts were not well coordinated.
health and welfare
Southern California’s mild climate has long attracted health seekers. In the early 1880s, thousands of tuberculosis and asthma patients were treated at numerous hospitals and clinics. Although this “health rush” has long since ended, excellent medical facilities remain in the area. USC’s School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Kaiser Permanente, Cedars-Sinai, and City of Hope hospitals have received numerous awards for quality service.
The responsibility to protect public health and welfare rests with the county. The nation’s largest health services sector has long struggled with a lack of funding to serve a growing number of poor clients. The county also handles all public welfare matters. The number of patients almost halved between 1988 and 1992, with 1.3 million people on welfare at the time, and the situation has been described as a social emergency of historic proportions. In the mid-1980s, welfare costs ballooned primarily due to foreign immigration, many of them illegally. More of those immigrants lived in Southern California than in other parts of the United States. The welfare-to-work reform program enacted by national law in 1996 significantly reduced the number of cases and connected people to social services. However, most of the program’s participants remained poor and worked in low-wage jobs without benefits. Largely due to the influx of poor immigrant families, Los Angeles County alone had to manage more cases than most U.S. states in the early 21st century, increasing concentrations of poverty.
education
The Los Angeles area is known for its public and private higher education institutions and distinguished faculty, including Nobel Prize winners. UCLA was founded in 1919 and is the largest branch of the University of California system. The California State University System has four campuses in the county: Dominguez Hills, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Northridge. Among reputable private universities, USC, the oldest independent university in the West (founded in 1880), has an excellent professional school. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has made significant achievements in the field of science. Claremont College, Occidental College, and Loyola Marymount are among the premier small institutions specializing in the liberal arts. Los Angeles pioneered the creation of two-year community colleges, and today thousands of students enroll in California universities.
Southern California has many independent school districts. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest public school district in the United States, is governed by an independently elected board of directors that operates under the jurisdiction of the state rather than the city. In the 1970s, unrest erupted over court-ordered bus service aimed at eliminating racial discrimination. This lawsuit did not receive full public support and led to “white flight” to the suburbs and the establishment of numerous private schools. LAUSD had more than 750,000 students at the beginning of the 21st century, the majority of whom were Latino. In recent decades, the system has struggled to improve teaching and learning amid exploding enrollment and declining public funding for education.
