In the late 60s and through the 70s the area around the Capital Buildings and Encanto Park were drug central. South Phoenix had gangs and lots of drive by shootings in the 70s. The mob was here in force in the 60s, spill over from Vegas. Remember when Don Bowls was blown up for investigating the mob and the Phoenix Suns basketball team?
We all loved Wallace and Ladmo.
Humm.... I guess I lived in a "different Phoenix".
Yes, I remember Don Bolles.....
But the people who placed a bomb under his car never attacked me or my family. They never kicked in our door are robbed us. They never raped my grandmother when she was in a nursing home in Glendale. They never pulled a gun on me when I was working in Parking Enforcement in downtown. The people who did all of these crimes that my family and I experienced were "other people" who were NOT native Phoenicians. Many of these other people were from Chicago, Oakland, Compton, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Mexico, with extensive criminal histories, and no connection to the valley; to the city I loved and was born and raised in.
Drug use in Encanto Park in the 60s and 70s?
We went there all the time in the 1960s. My mom would take us to the main library on McDowell and then we would hit Encanto Park or Nelson's Pool. Maybe, maybe, some hippies smoking pot, but nothing even close to the open air drug market that now operates 24/7 at the major intersection of 19th Ave. and Camelback Rd. in central Phoenix. Gangs from Oakland, (LA Crips) all wearing blue bandanas are the ones openly selling crack and crystal meth in broad daylight. (These are not the people I grew up with in the 1960s and 1970s.)
South Phoenix?
I don't remember ever reading about multiple people being shot to death in "drive by shootings" in the newspapers back then. Drive by shootings didn't really begin until the 1980s with the arrival of millions of Non-Arizonans who were not native to Arizona. And frankly, South Phoenix was another planet: we never, ever, even went close to that place. It was a sewer then, its a sewer now.
I finally had had enough in 2014, when we had a house near 44th st. and Indian School Rd. near Camelback mountain and near Scottsdale: NOT the "ghetto" or "barrio" of Glendale. On my street, within a span of about 6 months, there were 3 home invasions where masked men with guns kicked in the doors and robbed the families, and before we moved, my brother, (who lived with us at the time) was pulling out of our driveway at 4:00 PM in the afternoon, and a "transient" (police said he was homeless, and also had an extensive criminal history) put a gun to my brother's head and said, "Give me you f***ing car" and carjacked my brother and later crashed his car a few miles away. My brother wasn't hurt, but that is when I said enough is enough.
Now, I live in a small town in Minnesota where everyone looks like me, and crime, especially violent crime is unknown. Yes, I miss Phoenix, I miss the beautiful winters, but in order to be safe in Phoenix nowadays, you must live so far out like extreme North Scottsdale or Anthem, or Sun City where you have MCSO posse members keeping a watch, or a highly secure "gated community." People who say, "crime is everywhere, you can't escape it" are 100% wrong: you can escape it. There are still places in America, that still look like the America I grew up in. (Like Minnesota) Places where you don't worry about your safety: places where everyone looks like you have shares your same values.