REPORTING ON VIOLENCE
James J. Collins, senior program director, and Pamela M. Messerschmidt, analyst, Health and Social Policy Division, Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. "Epidemiology of Alcohol-Related Violence," Alcohol Health & Research World, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1993.
In a review of 15 studies that examined the drinking patterns of homicide offenders, most of the studies found that more than 60 percent of the offenders had been drinking alcohol when they committed murder. In a review of 28 studies that examined the drinking patterns of homicide victims, 14 studies indicated that 50 percent or more of the homicide victims had been drinking at the time of the murder. In assaults, researchers found that 24 to 82 percent of the offenders and 24 to 40 percent of the victims had been drinking at the time of the incidents. In 15 studies of husband-to-wife domestic violence, alcohol was present in more than half of all incidents of domestic violence; most commonly, both men and women were drinking.
Alcohol is associated with violent crime at a greater than chance level and at a significantly higher level than with nonviolent crime. Heavy drinking and a verbal argument usually precede the violent act, and the victim is as likely as the offender to initiate the altercation. However, it is the precipitator of the altercation who is more likely to be intoxicated. Although a strong correlational relationship exists between alcohol and violent crime, the evidence prohibits the establishment of a causal link.
In a study of medical examiner records for 792 homicides in Erie County, New York from 1972 to 1984, researchers found that circumstances related to finding alcohol in the blood of homicide victims include: male victim, black victim, victim ages 30-49, warm season, evening or night, stabbing incident, killing not related to another crime, and bar or restaurant location. Particularly high probabilities of alcohol in the blood of the victim are associated with men killed in evening or night, men killed by women, male black victims and all killings on Saturday or Sunday night. The results reflect two factors: normal patterns of heavy drinking and the likelihood that alcohol is associated with personal disputes.
In a study of 1,149 convicted male felons in North Carolina, those convicted of a criminal offense who report being under the influence of alcohol when they committed that violent offense are more likely to have committed a violent offense than those not using alcohol. People who meet the diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse/dependence are not more likely to have committed a violent offense than those who do not meet those criteria. This finding suggests that it is binge drinking, rather than characteristics associated with being "alcoholic," that is associated with increased likelihood of violence.
Increased alcohol outlet density is geographically associated with increased rates of assaultive violence, and this association is independent of other factors. In a study of 74 cities of populations more than 10,000 in Los Angeles County, California, researchers concluded that in a typical Los Angeles city of 50,000 residents with 100 alcohol outlets and 570 violent offenses per year, each outlet was associated with an additional 3.4 violent offenses in 1990.
Sylvia Castillo
Associate Director
Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment
8101 South Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90044
213-750-9087
James Mosher
Senior Policy Advisor
The Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems
24 Belvedere Street
San Rafael, CA 94901
415-456-5692
e-mail: james@marininstitute.org
The Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems
Rose Works
Policy Advisor to council member Jane Brunner
Oakland City Hall
1 City Hall Plaza
Oakland, CA 94612
510-238-7013
e-mail: rworks@oaklandnet.com
Case study information derived from interviews with Sylvia Castillo, James Mosher, Rose Works and from "Confronting Sacramento: State Preemption, Community Control and Alcohol-Outlet Blight in Two Inner-City Communities," by James Mosher and Rose Works.
The law: The state of California has the exclusive right and power to license and regulate the manufacture, sale, purchase, possession and transportation of alcoholic beverages within the state. Nevertheless, the state recognizes the right of local communities to impose reasonable land use and zoning restrictions to address health and safety problems that may occur from a particular form of land use. But businesses in place before local zoning changes are passed may continue operation, although questions are arising as to how far local communities can go in using zoning to regulate the business' operations.
South Central Los Angeles, an area of 15 square miles, is home to about 260,000 people. The majority of South Central residents are Latino, followed by African Americans, Asians, Native Americans and whites. California limits full-service liquor stores to one for every 2,500 residents in a county. But there are only limited state restrictions on where in a county those stores are located, so many alcohol outlets can be concentrated in a single neighborhood. And there are no restrictions on the number of beer and wine outlets. In Los Angeles County, more than 7,200 stores sell alcohol. Ten percent - 728 - are located in South Central, which houses 7 percent of Los Angeles' population and 3 percent of its area.
Residents of South Central Los Angeles complained long ago that alcohol outlets were magnets for crime that created serious community problems. In 1983, they founded the South Central Organizing Committee (SCOC), which was concerned with the overabundance of alcohol outlets and the crime that they attracted. The group did a study that revealed that their community had more alcohol outlets than 13 states. Rhode Island, for example, has 280 alcohol outlets serving 1.3 million people.
Normally, policing of alcohol outlets falls to the state Alcohol Beverage Control agency. However, with state budget cutbacks, the state reduced its inspectors to such a degree that law-breaking on the part of alcohol outlets resulted in few consequences.
The SCOC turned to the Los Angeles Police Department for help in targeting crime around 20 of the most problematic alcohol outlets, which at that time were owned by African Americans. The LAPD made 600 alcohol-related arrests in eight weeks but could not keep up the enforcement due to budgetary constraints. The SCOC decided to try land-use regulations, and in 1984 the group succeeded in pushing passage of a city ordinance restricting the number and location of new outlets in South Central. The program was adopted citywide in 1987.
But the ordinance did not apply to the vast majority of alcohol outlets that had received their licenses prior to its enactment. In 1990, the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment was formed to address alcohol and other drug abuse problems. It succeeded in preventing the 1984 alcohol ordinance from being amended to allow more outlets. The community also pushed for the founding of the Mayor's Task Force on Problem Liquor Stores. At its first meeting on April 28, 1992, residents were dismayed to discover that the city was not revoking the licenses of problem liquor stores, those that regularly sold alcohol to minors, created public nuisance conditions and violated other state laws.
On April 29, a Superior Court jury decision handed down the verdict in the Rodney King beating trial. In the violence that followed, approximately 200 of the 728 alcohol outlets were destroyed.
The city government, operating in crisis mode, put all destroyed businesses on a fast track to rebuild. The proposed ordinance - the Emergency Rebuild L.A. Ordinance - would have eliminated any community input. South Central Los Angeles citizens flooded phone lines to express their opposition to the rebuilding of alcohol outlets. According to those who called, the outlets had been a source of serious community disruption and criminal activity. With the outlets gone there was a decrease in violent crime and nuisance activity, such as public urination, excess garbage, people hanging around and drinking on sofas outside the outlets.
After much community pressure, the city eliminated alcohol outlets, pawn shops, swap meets, gun shops and auto wrecking shops from the fast track rebuilding process. After 35,000 signatures were gathered on a petition for a moratorium on the rebuilding of all alcohol outlets, the community pushed a plan, which was adopted by the city, to create incentives for owners of alcohol outlets to convert them into other businesses, such as laundromats, in an effort to create an economy less dependent on alcohol sales. The Community Coalition realized that to defend its alternate business plan against lawsuits by the alcohol industry and alcohol outlet owners, it would have to show that an overabundance of alcohol outlets was harmful to the health and safety of the community. It met with researchers and Los Angeles Police Department officials to document the social problems associated with alcohol outlets and to establish the connection between the density of outlets and the incidence of violence.
The L.A. city attorney refused to put a moratorium on the rebuilding of alcohol outlets but required a hearing on each petition to rebuild in order to give the community a chance to provide information about the history of retailers requesting to rebuild. The hearings began on September 3, 1993. Each week for the next several months, four to six alcohol retailers sought approval to rebuild. The hearings demonstrated the city's failure to oversee the operations of alcohol outlets in South Central. There was no organized procedure for collecting complaints, and the city had no procedures for follow-up and investigation.
Of the 200 alcohol outlets that were destroyed, 59 applied to rebuild as alcohol outlets, while 31 converted to other businesses, including a credit union, a shoe store, a day care center and a grocery store that did not sell alcohol. Of the 59 that applied to rebuild as alcohol outlets, 35 have opened their doors. The city has supported the imposition of various conditions, including restricted sales hours, security guards, outside seating bans and bans on sales of liquor in paper cups. The reasons for the bulk of stores not reopening include the inability to collect on insurance because many outlets had purchased bogus insurance from an offshore company, a realization by landowners that businesses were risky, an unwillingness by financial institutions to lend money for alcohol outlets and an unwillingness by owners to go through political hearings.
Throughout this procedure the alcohol industry presented a different point of view. It portrayed itself as a victim of the protests and said that the underlying reason for the destruction of the alcohol outlets was racial strife between African Americans and Korean Americans. The organizations involved included the Korean American Victims Association, Korean American Grocers Association, California Retail Wine and Spirit Association, the Mexican American Grocers Association and the California State Package Store and Tavern Owners Association.
The retailer groups - with the help of the Beer Institute, the Wine Institute and the California Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association - filed a lawsuit on May 10, 1993 contesting the city's power to regulate the rebuilding of the stores. The suit was unsuccessful. The lower court ruled in favor of the city, and the California Court of Appeals affirmed.
The Community Coalition, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference continue to press the issue of alcohol outlets as one of health, safety and economic development. The group pointed out that Jewish owners operated the stores in the 1960s, then sold them to African Americans in the 1970s, who sold them to Asian Americans in the 1980s. The problems of crime remained the same, no matter who owned the stores. University of Southern California epidemiologists made the first quantifiable link between the number of alcohol outlets and incidence of crime, and the Los Angeles Police Department has reports that show a decrease in crime in neighborhoods that now have fewer alcohol outlets.
At this writing, the Los Angeles Police Department has not made public most of its crime data for South Central Los Angeles neighborhoods with alcohol outlets. Although there has been qualitative research done to document the changes that residents see in terms of an improvement in the quality of life (less crime, fewer nuisance incidents), no research group is documenting the drop in crime due to the decrease in alcohol outlets. The state ABC still does not have enough resources to police the alcohol outlets, so the residents of South Central Los Angeles are monitoring the businesses and documenting infractions. The alcohol industry is lobbying Congress to cut off federal drug and alcohol abuse funding to the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment.