Southern California City Research Articles

Testing a Crime Control Model: Does Strategic and Directed Deployment of Police Officers Lead to Lower Crime?

The purpose of the paper was to investigate whether implementation of a crime control model (based, in part, on the concepts of COMPSTAT) in one southern California city was effective in reducing crime. Time series regression models were fitted to data collected from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, city of Perris, for the years 2000 through 2010. Additional data were collected from three other cities that served as controls. Results showed that the program was effective in reducing crime rates in Perris. The effect remained significant even after taking into account time trends and control cities. Analysis also found that while the program was more effective in lessening total and property crime rates, it was less so for violent crime rates. It was concluded that strategic and directed policing models (e.g., COMPSTAT, hot spot policing, etc.) may be more effective in crime reduction efforts than reactive policing methods.

Neighborhood poverty, park use, and park-based physical activity in a Southern California city

A rich literature indicates that individuals of lower socio-economic status engage in less leisure time physical activity than individuals of higher socio-economic status. However, the source of the difference is believed to be, in part, due to differential access to resources that support physical activity. However, it has not been shown as to whether equal access to parks can mitigate differences in leisure time physical activity. Using systematic direct observation, we quantified physical activity in neighborhood parks in a large Southern California city located in areas with high, medium, and a low percentage of households in poverty. We documented how neighborhood parks are managed and programmed and also interviewed both a sample of park users and a random sample of households within a mile radius of the parks. We found that parks are used less in high-poverty areas compared to medium- and low-poverty area parks, even after accounting for differences in size, staffing, and programming. The strongest correlates of park use were the number of part time staff, the number of supervised and organized programs, and knowing the park staff. Perceptions of safety were not relevant to park use among those interviewed in the park, however it had a small relationship with reported frequency of park use among local residents. Among park users, time spent watching electronic media was negatively correlated with the frequency of visiting the park. Future research should test whether increasing park staffing and programming will lead to increased park use in high-poverty neighborhoods.

Framework to Determine Total Maximum Daily Flow Diversions for Fish Protection

This paper describes a framework to determine the total maximum daily flow diversions (TMDFDs) of freshwater from the San Francisco Bay Delta that can be undertaken without causing the extinction of salmon, striped bass, and delta smelt. The framework comprises three models: the watershed analysis risk management framework (WARMF) model of tributary rivers, the Link-Node estuary model of the Bay Delta, and the monthly cohort life-cycle model of fish. The first two models simulate the environmental conditions of river segments and estuary “Nodes” in which fish live. The fish model deposits eggs in river segments on specified months. The eggs become larvae, juveniles, and young as they move downstream to the estuary “Nodes” where they may die, be eaten, or be entrained into pumps that divert water for export to northern and southern California cities and Central Valley farms. Thus, flow diversion is mechanistically connected to fish decline. These models are integrated by the graphical user interface (GUI) ...

Fine particulate concentrations on sidewalks in five Southern California cities

Abstract This research provides an exploratory examination of the factors associated with fine particle concentrations in intersection and sidewalk microenvironments in five study areas in the Los Angeles region. The study areas range from low-density, auto-oriented development patterns to dense urban areas with mid- and high-rise buildings. Average concentrations of FP DT (fine particle concentrations measured with DustTrak Aerosol Monitors) ranged from about 20 to 70 μg m −3 across study areas during stationary and mobile (walking) monitoring in morning, midday, and evening periods. Results suggest that fine particle concentrations are highly variable on urban sidewalks. A regression analysis shows that concentrations are associated with traffic and the proximate built environment characteristics after accounting for meteorological factors, time of day, and location in the region. Regressions show higher concentrations were associated with lower wind speeds and higher temperatures, higher adjacent passenger vehicle traffic, higher ambient concentrations, and street canyons with buildings of over five stories. Locations in street canyons with 2–5 story buildings and with more paving and open space had lower concentrations after accounting for other factors. The associations with traffic and built environment variables explained a small amount of the variation in FP DT concentrations, suggesting that future research should examine the relative role of localized traffic and built environment characteristics compared to regional ambient concentrations and meteorology.

Genetic Variation in the Glutathione Synthesis Pathway, Air Pollution, and Children's Lung Function Growth

Glutathione plays an important role in antioxidant and inflammatory processes in the lung. Alterations in glutathione metabolism are a central feature of several chronic lung diseases. To determine whether sequence variation in genes in the glutathione synthesis pathway alters susceptibility to air pollution effects on lung function. In this prospective study, 14,821 lung function measurements were taken on 2,106 children from 12 Southern California cities. Tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms in glutathione metabolism pathway genes GSS, GSR, GCLM, and GCLC were genotyped by GoldenGate assay (Illumina, San Diego, CA). Mixed regression models were used to determine whether particular haplotypes were associated with FEV(1), maximal mid-expiratory flow rate, and FVC and whether any of the genetic associations varied with levels of exposure to air pollutants. We found that variation in the GSS locus was associated with differences in susceptibility of children for lung function growth deficits associated with NO(2), PM(10), PM(2.5), elemental carbon, organic carbon, and O(3). The negative effects of air pollutants were largely observed within participants who had a particular GSS haplotype. The effects ranged from -124.2 to -149.1 for FEV(1), from -92.9 to -126.7 for FVC, and from -193.9 to -277.9 for maximal mid-expiratory flow rate for all pollutants except O(3), which showed a larger decrease in lung function in children without this haplotype. Variation in GSS was associated with differences in susceptibility to adverse effects of pollutants on lung function growth.

Suffering in the Land of Sunshine: A Los Angeles Illness Narrative (review)

Reviewed by: Suffering in the Land of Sunshine: A Los Angeles Illness Narrative Gretchen Krueger Emily K. Abel. Suffering in the Land of Sunshine: A Los Angeles Illness Narrative. Critical Issues in Health and Medicine. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2006. xviii + 176 pp. Ill. $68.00 (cloth, 978-0-8135-3900-3), $24.95 (978-0-8135-3901-0). In the early 1900s, my husband’s great-grandfather moved his entire family across the country from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. He, like many others, sought a tuberculosis cure in the “land of sunshine.” Undoubtedly, his declining health, his deep concern for his family’s survival, and the promise of a better climate must have driven this Russian immigrant to journey west so soon after settling in America. But why did he choose this particular southern California city? In her book, Emily K. Abel illustrates how medical, social, and political factors combined to make this growing city both a haven for health seekers and a place whose leaders and residents had mixed feelings about welcoming all who sought comfort there. At the center of her story is Charles Dwight Willard—a transplant from Chicago, a journalist, a novelist, a city booster, and a near invalid whose experiences Abel uses to personalize her account. As Abel explains in the introduction, focusing the narrative on Willard was serendipitous. Amid her research for a related book, she found Willard’s rich cache of papers and correspondence at the Huntington Library. His frequent letters home to his parents and siblings, his dark stories and biting editorials, and his interactions with noted figures in local, state, and national politics made him a good candidate for a historical study. Moreover, his opinionated prose made him the perfect protagonist. Abel quotes from his writings frequently to outline his personal and professional life in California. We gain a detailed understanding of Willard’s struggle not only to support himself and, eventually, his small family, [End Page 423] but also to achieve a position of status in the bust and boom cycles of this early city. Each achievement, however, is dulled by the threat of a hemorrhage or other health setback. Abel captures Willard’s daily physical and emotional challenges, paying particular attention to the female caregivers—family members, hired servants, and boarders—who alleviated his suffering. As in her previous work, Hearts of Wisdom, she examines the obligations and rewards of lay nursing. Readers will quickly appreciate that Willard is a complex figure worth further investigation. At the outset of his career, he wrote of the health benefits of southern California. Using agricultural metaphors, he promoted the moderate climate as a place in which all things would thrive. However, as his own physical condition deteriorated, he was increasingly outspoken in his condemnation of policies designed to accommodate or welcome those with consumption to the area. Taking great pains to hide his own progressively declining health, he publicly condemned specific at-risk populations and condemned plans to improve or increase facilities for the ill. The pace of the narrative slows at times, as we learn of the day-to-day trials of Willard’s illness. It shines brightest, however, when Abel combines this careful accounting with her artful contextualization of Willard’s life amid the changing late-nineteenth-century California landscape, contemporary medical theories of consumption, and local political debates playing out in the newspapers and institutions Willard fought to join. The secondary literature to which Abel points is not exhaustive, but it provides a starting point for readers interested in the history of health and disease. Suffering in the Land of Sunshine is a rich case study that should be read alongside Abel’s recent book, Tuberculosis and the Politics of Exclusion,1 for a complete understanding of how chronic illness deeply affects the individual, family, community, and nation. Particularly through the voluminous writings of Charles Willard, Abel presents questions that help us reconsider the past and may help us rethink our current public health policies and, if not more important, our attitudes toward the sick. [End Page 424] Gretchen Krueger Wells Fargo Bank, San Francisco Footnotes 1. Emily K. Abel, Tuberculosis and the Politics of...

Disappearing into the Environmental–Industrial Complex

Disappearing into the Environmental–Industrial Complex

The Anaheim Scrip Plan

In 1932, at the worst point in the Great Depression, the small city of Anaheim, California, pioneered an experiment in self-liquidating stamp scrip. It was intended as a means of reducing unemployment while stimulating participating businesses. The Anaheim Plan put 157 men to work for a total of 8,750 hours, but proved problematical as a means of exchange. The experiment only lasted three months. Later, Anaheim's experiment was overshadowed by a Yale professor's advocacy of a similar plan and an experiment in Iowa. This article analyzes the Anaheim Plan's potential and its shortcomings while bringing long-overdue credit to this trail-blazing attempt to add to the circulating media of exchange and to increase productive employment in a small Southern California city prior to the New Deal.

Modeling Prosecutors' Charging Decisions in Domestic Violence Cases

Relatively little research explaining prosecutors'charging decisions in criminal cases is available. Even less has focused on charging decisions in domestic violence cases. Past studies have also relied on restrictive definitions of domestic violence, notablycases with male offenders and female victims, and they have not considered prosecutors'decisions to pursue misdemeanor instead of felony charges—or vice versa. In response to these limitations, the authors collected data on prosecutors'charging decisions in 245 domestic violence cases filed by police officers in a Southern California city. They then examined the effects of victim, offender, and case characteristics on prosecutors' charging decisions. The authors found that (a) arrest and serious victim injuries were associated with prosecutors'charging decisions, (b) criminal charges were more likely in cases with male suspects, and (c) victim preference for prosecution was likely to result in felony rather than misdemeanor charges.

Improving self-reports of drug-use: numeric estimates as fuzzy sets.

This study compared traditional crisp set to fuzzy set representations of quantitative estimates of drug use to investigate what survey respondents recall about their drug use. Sample survey comparing (a) responses to traditional survey questions asking for single numeric estimates to (b) responses to fuzzy set questions asking for boundary estimates of drug use. Research facilities of a public university in a large southern California city. Community residents using tobacco, alcohol, marijuana or amphetamine (n = 88). Personal interviews in which participants reported onset, frequency and daily rate of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and amphetamine use based on traditional survey questions and fuzzy set questions. With the exception of marijuana use, fuzzy boundary estimates differed significantly from the traditional point estimates (P < 0.05). Median retest reliabilities for fuzzy boundary estimates were 0.96 (tobacco), 0.81 (alcohol), 0.96 (marijuana) and 0.95 (amphetamine). The degree of vagueness varied by behavior and drug, with estimates of daily rates showing greatest fuzziness and onset of use showing least fuzziness. Participants recall more about past drug use than a single numeric estimate. All numeric estimates of drug use showed fuzzy set properties. Compared to traditional self-reports of drug use, fuzzy set representations provide a more complete and detailed description of what participants recall about past drug use.

The Intrametropolitan Geography of Poverty and the Nonprofit Sector in Southern California

This article investigates the geographic distribution of nonprofit social service providers across southern California cities in an attempt to see whether they reach people in poverty. Using 1996 Internal Revenue Service data from the National Center on Charitable Statistics, combined with 1990 census data, the authors find that the number of antipoverty nonprofits and their level of expenditure are higher in poorer cities. Nevertheless, given poverty concentration patterns, these activities are insufficient to guarantee equal services to poor persons in the poorest areas compared with those in wealthier cities. Regression analyses indicate that higher levels of nonprofit antipoverty activity are likely to be found in older and centrally located cities with higher socioeconomic status and significant government contribution to the provision of social services. These findings suggest that nonprofits and governments ought to be seen as complements rather than substitutes in efforts to alleviate intrametropolitan poverty disparities.

Assembling Postmodernism: Experience, Meaning, and the Space In-Between

Early in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, we encounter the heroine, Oedipa Maas, standing on a hillside overlooking the Southern California city of San Narciso. As she surveys the landscape below with its vast sprawl of houses,she [thinks] of the time she'd opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and [saw] her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her...with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had...there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed of an intent to communicate. There'd seemed no limit to what the printed circuit could have told her (if she had tried to find out); so in her first minute of San Narciso, a revelation also trembled just past the threshold of her understanding. (Pynchon 1966, 13)While superimposing her first printed circuit on the Southern California landscape in 1966, Oedipa, without quite realizing it, was standing on the verge of what we now call postmodernity. Both images-the city and printed circuit (a defining item of our information technology)and their complex, superimposed linkages are great icons of postmodernism.1 Now, more than a quarter of a century later, as the era might be drawing to a close, we are perhaps still just as puzzled and perplexed as we were at its beginning. Like the modernists, We had the experience but missed the meaning, as T. S. Eliot observed in what became a famous truism of his era.2 Indeed, by now we appear to be as confused about the meaning of this term as by the postmodern world itself. Like Oedipa, trying to navigate the labyrinths of Pynchon's novel, and like Sophocles's Oedipus wandering through the nightmare of his life, we may learn more and more, and yet its meaning (along with meaning itself) often seems-and is-maddeningly uncertain. And we are haunted by the possibility that it might never quite become clear.As a result, we inhabit, it seems ever more uneasily, the space between our experience of the world and its meaning-a space, experience, and meaning that seem even more complex and resistant to our grasp than those of modernism. What we have been learning to do, what we are still learning to do, is to span the gap that is this space. This essay aims to suggest how our students and we might do that, and the role literature might play in the process. My argument here is three-fold: that literature provides a privileged site in which the thought-ideas and conceptual structures-and the experiential feeling (both in its sensory and affective aspects) of postmodernism come together; and that, in this way, literature arguably constitutes one of the most powerful models and means available for bridging the gulf between them. Beyond its capacities to represent and synthesize ideas and experiences, literature is also a source of powerful challenges to various aspects of postmodernism, and so offers ways of thinking through (and perhaps even past) many of our peculiarly dilemmas.Postmodernism(s): DefinitionsFirst, however, it is necessary to explain what I mean by postmodernism, even though it may not be possible to define this term in the traditional, pre-postmodern way-that is, to give it a single sense, to determine its meaning once and for all, and so forth. In the theoretical world, such definitions tend to continuously undermine and sometimes un-define themselves. Indeed, even if it were possible to offer such a definition, would it not be too late by now? By this point in history, there are so many ways of seeing postmodernism, and the term is used by so many people in so many disparate ways, that it seems almost to mean or describe everything-and therefore, some of the critics of postmodernism would say, it means nothing. While, however, the first may well be true (although only to a certain degree), the second is not. …

Hardscape Damage by Tree Roots

Tree root damage to hardscape is a problem for most cities, costing millions of dollars annually statewide for repairs and associated legal expenses. There is a need to systematically identify which tree species are the most often associated with hardscape damage, so that urban tree managers can make appropriate species selections. This study uses TreeKeeper® data to compile a listing of those species most often associated with hardscape damage in three southern California cities, and compares results from another study.

Predictive Equations for Dimensions and Leaf Area of Coastal Southern California Street Trees

Tree height, crown height, crown width, diameter at breast height (dbh), and leaf area were measured for 16 species of commonly planted street trees in the coastal southern California city of Santa Monica, USA. The randomly sampled trees were planted from 1 to 44 years ago. Using number of years after planting or dbh as explanatory variables, mean values of dbh, tree height, crown width, and leaf area responses were modeled using two equations. There is strong correlation (adjusted R2 &gt; 0.70) between dbh as a function of number of years after planting, and total height, crown diameter, and leaf area as a function of dbh. Correlation is weaker between measures of crown height and dbh. This is probably due to crown pruning increasing the variability among measurements for trees having the same or similar dbh. Equations for less-intensively pruned species displayed adjusted R2 greater than 0.70. Equations are presented for predicting dimensions and leaf area and applied to compare tree sizes and growth for all species 15 and 30 years after planting.

The chemical composition of atmospheric ultrafine particles

Atmospheric ultrafine particles (with diameter less than 0.1 μm) may be responsible for some of the adverse health effects observed due to air–pollutant exposure. To date, little is known about the chemical composition of ultrafine particles in the atmosphere of cities. Ultrafine particle samples collected by inertial separation on the lower stages of cascade impactors can be analysed to determine a material balance on the chemical composition of such samples. Measurements of ultrafine particle mass concentration made in seven Southern California cities show that ultrafine particle concentrations in the size range 0.056–0.1 μm aerodynamic diameter average 0.55–1.16 μg m −3 . The chemical composition of these ultrafine particle samples averages 50% organic compounds, 14% trace metal oxides , 8.7% elemental carbon, 8.2% sulphate, 6.8% nitrate, 3.7% ammonium ion (excluding one outlier), 0.6% sodium and 0.5% chloride. The most abundant catalytic metals measured in the ultrafine particles are Fe, Ti, Cr, Zn, with Ce also present. A source emissions inventory constructed for the South Coast Air Basin that surrounds Los Angeles shows a primary ultrafine particle emissions rate of 13 tonnes per day. Those ultrafine particle primary emissions arise principally from mobile and stationary fuel combustion sources and are estimated to consist of 65% organic compounds, 7% elemental carbon, 7% sulphate, 4% trace elements, with very small quantities of sodium, chloride and nitrate. This information should assist the community of inhalation toxicologists in the design of realistic exposure studies involving ultrafine particles.

Surveillance of non-fatal workplace assault injuries, using police and employers' reports.

Although the majority of work-related homicides are routinely reported in the United States, information on non-fatal events is less complete. Comprehensive surveillance of non-fatal events depends on understanding reporting trends to different agencies. This study characterizes workplace assaults reported to police and through employers in eight southern California cities. Employers' reports filed from October 1, 1994, through January 31, 1995, and police reports filed from June 1, 1994, through March 31, 1995, that involved a non-fatal workplace assault injury were included. Reports from police and employers were linked, and annualized rates combining non-duplicative reports were calculated and event characteristics compared. The combined annualized rate of workplace assault injury for the eight cities was 184.6 per 100,000 workers, which was almost twice the rate found in either reporting source individually. Police reports differed from employers' reports by industry and occupation of victim but not type of event or weapons used. Examination of multiple reporting sources for non-fatal workplace assault injuries is essential to identifying the magnitude of these events. Understanding trends in reporting is important for the effective design of prevention programs.

Street Tree Diversity and DBH in Southern California

An inventory of the most common street tree species in 21 southern California cities was created. The inventory included information on tree species and diameter at breast height. The inventory indicates differences in existing species as well as differences in planting trends between coastal and inland regions. Links between the data and the potential for determining the age of the urban forest are discussed.

Organizing Inner City Neighborhoods to Reduce Alcohol and Drug Problems

The licit and illicit use of alcohol and other drugs is problematic in many inner city neighborhoods. Community-based responses to such problems can help alter the social and physical environment to improve such problems. This paper provides a case study of an organizing effort to reduce alcohol and other drug problems in one inner city neighborhood of a large southern California city. Specific attention is given to the organizing process used, specific neighborhood interventions, and outcomes. Issues and barriers related to this type of organizing also are discussed.

Assessing the Reliability, Factor Structure, and Validity of the African Self-Consciousness Scale in a General Population of African Americans

The purposes of this study were to conduct afactor analysis of Baldwin and Bell's African Self-Consciousness (ASC) Scale, evaluate the effect of demographic variables on one's African self-consciousness, and relate the ASC Scale scores to criterion behaviors in a non-Southern and noncollege population. The scale was administered to 147AfricanAmericans residing in three Southern California cities. The ASC Scale's reliability, factor structure, and construct validity were examined. The scale had a Cronbach's alpha of .78. Principal axesfactoranalysis foundfourfactors, and it is suggested that 32 out of 42 items be retained to formulate the revised subscale dimensions identified as Personal Identification With the Group, Self-ReinforcementAgainstRacism, Racial and Cultural Awareness, and Value for African Culture. The ASC Scale appears to be a viable instrument for use in research investigating African Americans.

Habitual physical activity and health-related physical fitness in fourth-grade children.

To examine the relationship between habitual physical activity and components of health-related physical fitness in children. Cross-sectional survey with correlational analysis. Seven public elementary schools in a suburban southern California city. Five hundred twenty-eight healthy fourth-grade children (274 boys and 254 girls), 85% of whom were non-Hispanic whites. Ninety-eight percent of eligible students participated. None. Results of six measures of physical activity in children (monitoring by accelerometer, parent report, and child self-reports of weekday activity, weekend activity, and summer involvement in activity classes and youth sports) were combined in a physical activity index. This index of habitual physical activity was examined in relation to measures of five components of health-related fitness: the mile run, skin-fold tests, pull-ups, sit-ups, and the sit-and-reach test. The physical activity index was significantly associated with all five fitness components. The canonical correlation was .29. Active children appear to engage in a sufficient variety of activities to enhance multiple components of health-related fitness.