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| Main | Changing Faces | Transformation | Building Problems | Population Shift |
Changing Faces
Joe Burrell is a 55-year old man who has lived in Lathrop for the last 23 years. He remembers a better time for Lathrop where older residents would sit outside in the evenings, people would visit with each other and the kids would play together.
Burrell compared Lathrop during this time to the town of Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show, with a public housing twist.
"It was more diverse with black and white," he said. "There are less whites now and more Hispanics. There were flowers and grass. It was quiet at night."
"There wasn't that much litter and graffiti. Things started to change as the people moved out." Burrell added.
He believes that a large reason for the decline of the Lathrop Homes and the surrounding area are the influx of new people. "There has almost been a complete turnover (in the population)," he said. "They are coming from the Southside and Westside, that have different attitudes."
To explain the difference in attitudes between the former residents and the attitudes the newly arriving residents had, he told a story. One day he was about to go to work and realized that he'd forgotten something in his home. So he jumped out of his car and ran into his house, leaving his car running outside. When he came back out, a new resident was standing by the car. The new resident told him that "back in my neighborhood you're car would be gone".
Burrell believes that this kind of thinking is a cancer that is eating away at Lathrop's moral foundation. Along with the different attitudes, also comes new gangs. According to Burrell, in the last 10 to 15 years Lathrop had become Latin Kings territory. But with the influx of new residents, some Gangsta Disciples also moved in.
He pointed to a disturbing instance where some Gangsta Disciples had set up a drug dealing operation out of a store front, which was also a candy store. He also remarked that he has to deal with new, "intruding" gang members constantly sizing him up. He worries that they might mistake him for the wrong person and possibly attack him.