‘These Kids Don’t Care’: Long Beach Residents Feel Unsafe in Their Own Homes as Violent Children and Teens Run Wild, Blamed for Beatings, Arson, Car Theft

After dealing with everything from assault to arson to break-ins to theft, residents of the Camden Harbor View Apartments at the heart of Long Beach, California, have had enough. One resident is even calling for armed guards.One of the apartment’s most recent problems has centered around some seriously trouble-seeking children.“These kids don’t care. They are looking for trouble,” a tenant named Kimberly told Los Angeles television news station KTLA. “One hit me with a skateboard.”Kimberly went on to explain she witnessed another man being attacked during that same encounter in her apartment’s courtyard.“They were stalking him, and he didn’t want to fight back,” she said. “He was just trying to get them to stop. He didn’t want to hurt any kids.”As if that weren’t enough, she also has video footage of a teen ‘donkey kicking’ down her apartment door before running off with friends.“We need somebody that actually cares, but at this point you need armed guards,” Kimberly said. “I mean, you have to take back your property.”Fellow resident Susan Herman was also reportedly attacked by teenagers, this time at the apartment’s pool. She calls safety measures being taken by the apartment such as a courtesy patrol “a joke.”“Cars stolen, cars vandalized, people beat up… what does it take?” Ms. Herman said. “You have amenities here that you’re afraid to use because you don’t know what you’re going to find. And those teenagers, they’re just out of control.”According to a report from FOX 11 Los Angeles, Javier Diaz is another resident who has voiced his concerns about the safety of the building. After nearly being attacked by a group of children, he points to a nearby skate park in Lincoln Park for drawing a certain, problematic crowd.“One day I get off the train and there was probably ten of them from 6 years old to 12… and they [started] jumping on me, and they was touching me, practically,” he explained. “One of them touched my watch, and I got a little scared.” “Why don’t they show respect?”The Camden Harbor View Apartments were also in the news in September after Long Beach Fire Department arson investigators were looking into five vehicle fires set in and nearby the apartment complex.“It’s very scary because I don’t know if I’m going to wake up and it’s my turn next,” resident Kimberly Lewis told KTLA. “The car that was on fire this morning was literally right around the corner from where my car is parked.”Camden Living, the owners of the property, reportedly sent a recent statement to FOX11 saying they were “closely” working with the Long Beach Police department and had “increased community security and requested additional patrols by the Long Beach Police Department” in early September. Still, one resident is looking at leaving altogether. “We don’t feel safe and are looking at leaving,” explained James, another Camden resident. “If it happens one night, I get it. If it happens two or three nights, what’s happening? Are you even doing your job?”“Things have really gone downhill to the point that we don’t feel safe here,” tenant Janice Steel said. “We expressed that to management many, many times.”Devastating events have touched the area beyond the apartment building, too. The Long Beach Police Department recently released a statement explaining that homicide detectives were investigating a murder of a male adult identified as 33-year-old Thomas Ferguson that took place on Oct. 22, 2023, about 1.5 miles from the apartment complex.And less than a mile from the Camden Harbor View Apartments, a local hair salon called Salon 500 has been struggling with a string of distressing incidents including, most recently, indecent exposure when a man approached the salon window and exposed himself for about five minutes after sending a customer running into the store.“My client was coming in and she noticed that someone was in the back of her so she kind of ran into the salon,” owner of Salon 500, Valeska Quinonez, said. “Then the gentleman was outside the window. He had his hands inside his pants and he was not stopping.”Quinonez also said her business has also been “robbed by homeless” and one of her employees was sexually assaulted right near the salon.It’s just gotten out of hand, completely out of hand,” she said.A nearby business owner, Christine Parsley, has beared witness to a lot of crime in her neighborhood. Hence why she’s struggled to find the courage just to leave her store.“I carry pepper spray now to go to the store to go get a beverage and I’ve never done that before,” she said. “And I’ve never felt like this in this neighborhood before.”But do these incidents speak to a larger issue of rising crime rates in Long Beach? The answer may be unclear, but there were 20,954 crimes recorded this year as of August 2023, according to the Long Beach Police Department’s citywide crime statistics.It’s hard to compare this data with crime rates from previous years, however, because there was a transition from collecting summary-based data to incident-based data that began in September of 2022. With the old system, “only the most serious offense [was] reported” per incident but now “up to ten offenses can be reported per incident,” according to a statement made by the Long Beach Police Department in March 2023. In other words, certain crime statistics will appear to have increased from previous years to now.Still, it should be noted that five-year summary crime stat comparisons from December 2017 to 2022 show that 2022 saw the highest total crimes reported compared to any of the other years in that five-year period.Long Beach’s mayor, Rex Richardson, recently said he’s trying to make downtown Long Beach more safe by bolstering police presence and mental health resources in the area.“We need to partner with our counties to make sure we deploy more mental health and substance use vans and treatment here in our downtown. Comprehensively we need to work together to support our small businesses,” Mr. Richardson said.Thankfully, people like Ms. Parsley have noticed some action being taken, particularly with the Downtown Long Beach Alliance’s work and their safety ambassadors which “patrol the streets” every day and try to “assist in crime prevention.”“They’ve been coming out a lot more too, which we really appreciate,” Ms. Parsley said. “It does make us feel a little better to see that kind of stuff going on,” Ms. Parsley said.

‘These Kids Don’t Care’: Long Beach Residents Feel Unsafe in Their Own Homes as Violent Children and Teens Run Wild, Blamed for Beatings, Arson, Car Theft

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