Ghettoside by Jill Leovy
Ghettoside, that wonderful neologism, forms the title of this dark and murderous LA noir. The only problem being that it’s 100% real.
LA Times reporter Jill Leovy spent over a decade embedded within the LAPD, investigating a murder epidemic involving young black males. The killings seem senseless and juvenile – not only in relation to the tragedy of the victims' ages (many in their early teens), but also the incidents' origins – bruised egos, territorial disputes. Leovy refuses to condescend, aspiring instead to understand by combining what is basically urban conflict reportage with historical framing and scientific grounding. She discovers a twilight society which holds no trust in American justice and so extracts its own terrible version on the streets of Watts – which are policed heavily and microscopically, on all aspects bar murder, by an establishment 'obsessed with nuisance crime, and lax [with regards to] answering for black lives.'
These cops and crims are finely fleshed out – the boys in blue hagiographically at times – and this true life tale builds the narrative steam of the finest thriller. Ghettoside is an exceptional and dedicated piece of work which sits alongside William Shaw’s Westsiders and Randall Sullivan’s Labyrinth in exposing the ground floor of a two-tier city, a place of perpetual fear and mourning where age, zip code and most importantly skin colour dictate which young lives must live in the crosshairs.