“Open Minds – Open Hearts,” reads a Willmore District mural mere blocks from two recent shootings. “Building the Future.” Photo by Greggory Moore.

The bad news comes from the Long Beach Police Department almost weekly now. Last week, it came three times. “MURDER,” reads the headline of an October 1 LBPD news release. A September 27 release said the same. Ditto for September 26, September 22, August 29, August 21, August 1, July 24, July 22, July 21.

It’s been like that all year, with all but one of the above-referenced victims killed by gunfire. Although the details of the murders vary, to many Long Beachers it feels like a trend, a trend taking place while an understaffed police department copes with yet more budget cuts. It’s a scenario that has many residents living increasingly fearful lives.

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Asya Anderson more or less rode her bike into police tape as she returned home on September 22. The next morning she heard rumors of a murder, rumors that turned out to the true. It was the second shooting in as many days in the Willmore District, and yet another nudge that may eventually push her out of the neighborhood.

“Honestly, it makes me nervous, and it does kind of make me want to move out of the neighborhood, and that’s not normally the kind of reaction that I have to crime,” Anderson says. “It’s not something that I typically think of myself as particularly susceptible to, because I’m not involved in drugs or in a gang or anything like that. But the fact that there’s gun violence happening on the street scares me. It scares me a lot more than I would expect.”

Despite having a couple of bikes stolen, Anderson has not found herself fearful in the Willmore District during her years there. But she is starting to feel otherwise.

“It’s a shift that I’ve noticed in the past few months,” she says. “I used to feel very comfortable walking around at night. But now I don’t feel comfortable. And I don’t bring my wallet. That’s weird, because I’m not a naturally fearful person. I wouldn’t have moved into this neighborhood if I were that kind of person.”

Ben Fisher was home during the shooting—and all too close.

“I feel like I’ve heard things that were more in the distance and been like, ‘Oh, I think that’s gunshots. The cadence of that was not a firework’; but I knew immediately this was gunfire,” he says. “I killed the lights, turned off the music, and moved back [to the rear of his domicile] to get as far away from it as I could. [But then] I could hear the guy in the alley, and I said, ‘Whoa, I don’t know who’s following this guy. I don’t want to be back here anymore.'”

Another nearby resident, Cherise (a pseudonym), describes her experience: “I heard, like, five gunshots. The guy screamed when he got shot. That was the most disturbing part of it: hearing the guy kind of yelp. [Then] I saw the [victim] running down the alley. […] That’s the first shooting that I’ve heard that I’m aware of. […] It’s a pretty non-violent neighborhood, for the most part. I mean, bikes get stolen, and cars get vandalized sometimes, but there isn’t a lot of gunfire here normally.”

But Willmore is not the only neighborhood hearing gunshots lately. Murders this year—and especially over the summer—have occurred in North Long Beach, Central Long Beach, near Downtown, and even just outside of the historic Hellman District, where three teenagers were arrested last week for gunning down a 20-year-old in front of his young relative for refusing to tell them which gang he was in. 

“My hope is that [the current spate of area violence] is something that will pass,” Fisher says. “I feel somewhat shaken by it; but my determination to live here and help make this a beautiful place is not shaken at all. But when I think macro, I don’t really see any reason for violent crime to decrease. I mean, we’re defunding [both] police and education. So essentially there’s two paths [to combating the violence]: there’s enforcement, and there’s opportunity. And we’re defunding both of them.”

“I don’t have any reason to feel like the problems will go away for as long as we don’t care to address the socioeconomic issues that create scarcity and the kind of disparity that [foments] gang violence and other kinds of crimes,” says Ryan Serrano, another area resident. “If we continue to pull back from protecting and educating the majority of the population—who just so happen to be on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder—that means most of the population is going to be interested in fixing their situation in one way or another. [Crime] is a reaction to that. […] We have enough history as a civilization to see that […] if you don’t help people, they will help themselves. […] I have no idea what the point of contention [that led to the recent shootings] was, [whether] it was about drug territory or a personal vendetta. The point is that, for as long as we have people who are desperate living among us and we don’t help them, there are certain symptoms that we know will go along with that [condition]. Violent crime is one of them.”

Phillip (also a pseudonym), who emigrated from the rural Midwest three years ago and moved to the Willmore District from the Retro Row area just this week, admits that it’s unsettling to land in a new home just after a flare-up of violence.

“I actually put off moving into this neighborhood for a while because I felt unsafe here, so it’s a surreal feeling for there to have been a shooting here days before I moved in,” he says. “[…] Since I moved to Long Beach I’ve learned to be wary, to look out to see who’s out on the sidewalk, who’s out on the street, who’s driving in cars, that sort of thing.”

Cherise believes not knowing one’s neighbors—a situation endemic to urban environments—is another factor facilitating violence.

“Cities are inherently more violent than small towns because [cities] are more anonymous,” she speculates. “[…] I think the way to get the neighborhood to be safer is to decrease the anonymity of short-term residents that people don’t know who are able to perpetuate the violence because people don’t know them, and so they don’t feel bad about having their neighbors be in the crossfire, because they’re not friends with the [innocent bystanders]. […] My understanding of this neighborhood is that there are long-term residents, and there are short-term residents. The people that seem to be involved in these shooting seem to be short-term residents. The long-term residents [include] these little kids that I’ve seen grow up from ages 2 to 6, and people who all know each other. They’re mostly just low-income families who can’t afford to live anywhere else.”

Fisher hopes that the quality long-term residents—whatever their ethnicity—stay and band together in order to refashion their community into a more desirable place to live.

“A lot of my friends and family suggest ‘white flight’ as the best option,” he says. “But as someone who sees myself as an activist and wants social justice, I think it’s pretty gross that some of the people that I surround myself with think that an appropriate response to a community showing symptoms of people not having opportunity is to say, ‘I have opportunity—let me get out of here.’ […] As an activist, how do I bring light to the neighborhood? […] I don’t know what a really appropriate long-term response is. […] I know that violent crime is up in Long Beach in general, and I don’t see how you push back against that unless people start organizing.”

Look for Part 2 later this week, which will feature city officials’ response to the issues raised above.