Stockton's Poor Mired In Violence After Police Cuts, Recession

STOCKTON, Calif. –- Last year, Pablo Cano put to rest 12 murder victims, the most he's handled in four decades as an undertaker in this troubled city. Many of the dead were still in their teens.

No homicides have come his way so far this year, but in late February he buried a 16-year-old shot in the head, this time in an apparent accident. The job, he says, wears on him.

"I'm so tired of burying these young kids who barely have a chance to start their lives," says Cano, 70.

Some people grimly joke that the wave of Stockton murders -- which hit an all-time high of 58 in 2011 -- must be good for Cano's bottom line. That's hardly the case. Often the families of victims can scrape together only a few hundred dollars even after turning to friends and neighbors for help. He sometimes offers steep discounts so he doesn’t have to turn them away.

"In the last year, I've had to help a lot more people. They just don't have the money," he says. "They have tamale sales. I've had some pay for the balance with two car washes."

Stockton, a city of nearly 300,000 with a heavily agricultural economy, saw home construction soar during the housing frenzy that swept through here and the rest of the country several years ago, and became a foreclosure epicenter when the boom turned to bust. The pain of the housing and economic meltdown feels more apparent here, if only because Stockton has long been home to deep pockets of poverty and rampant street crime.


It is hardly alone in its struggles.

Despite clear success reining in crime nationally in recent decades, pockets of extremely high crime rates can still be found in almost every American city. These areas, virtually without exception, are populated by people at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

"You're not going to find a lot of homicide in high-income or even middle-income neighborhoods," says Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University. "The bulk of the action is in these poor neighborhoods."

With a median income just two-thirds of the California average, Stockton has struggled for decades with some of the state’s highest crime rates. Public safety improved during the flush years of the housing boom, and in 2008, homicides fell to just 24, the lowest level in nearly 30 years. But those gains quickly slipped away with the collapse of the housing market and the recession.

To plug gaping deficits, the city council slashed the police department budget, shrinking the size of the force and cutting the pay and benefits of officers who remained. Stockton dismantled a narcotics force, scaled back community policing efforts -- and killings soared. Eight murders in January and February in 2012 put Stockton on pace to break the 2011 homicide record.

Original Article
Source: Huff
Author:  John Rudolf