RUNNING HEAD: Watts and the 1965 Los Angeles riots
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Angeles county (LAPD, 1999; LASD, 1997). The raw number was divided by population
size and multiplied by 1000, to obtain crime incidence per 1000 residents. The level of
association between fear and crime was determined by calculating the Pearson r
correlation statistic. Level of fear for each police district was obtained by averaging the
value of the pixels falling, in the fear map obtained by combining all 215 individual
maps, within the boundaries of each police district, so that a single “level of fear” score,
between 2 and -1, was assigned to each of the these districts.
The same averaging technique was used for answering research questions 4 and 5.
The main task, this time, was to obtain a single level of fear of Watts for each of the maps
generated by the different groups of Los Angeles residents over 45 years old. Because
Watts is a place (neighborhood) name, rather than an administrative district of Los
Angeles, and no official borders exist, Watts was defined to be the 1 mile radius circle
around the intersection of 103
rd
Street and Wilmington Blvd. This specific intersection
falls half-way through the distance between Central and Alameda Avenues. The 1 mile
distance was chosen because 1 mile North and South of this intersection are Watts’
borders with Florence-Graham and Willowbrook, two Los Angeles county subdivisions.
The circle we drew covers about 90% of what is traditionally considered to be the Watts
district of Los Angeles. The mean levels of fear obtained from the four maps were
compared using the t-test.
Analysis
RQ1 and RQ2
The first two research questions ask: does the epicenter of fear, detected in the
215-respondent group map, overlap best with the 1965 or the 1992 “hot spots?”
Convention