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In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

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Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#151

Post by toyg »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #49
Spooky23 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That $40k home isn’t so cheap when you make $13k and interest rates were 11-15%. My entire extended family mostly bailed out of NYC because they bought houses for $10-25k in the 70s and sold for 20x in the late 80s. That profit gave that generation a vault up the ladder and the prime the pump mortgage policy made a few rich.

> That $40k home isn’t so cheap when you make $13k and interest rates were 11-15%. With a decent down payment (lets say ~15%) that's still less than 5 years salary even with interest, which would be completely acceptable terms especially since cost of living was way more affordable back then and the population had ~10 million people less than today in the 90s. Just to give you context that's more in population increa…

I reckon you can find tons of ex-hippies who would say “California will never go back to what in was in the ‘70s”, when they were already onboard Janis Joplin’s Big Yellow Taxi (written in 1970 and inspired by Hawaii, but massively popular in 1974 California too) and decrying the loss of “Steinbeck’s California”.

Places change, and places with little historical roots as most of the US tend to change even faster. That’s just how it is.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#152

Post by jojohohanon »

davidgaw wrote: post #3

Man, I definitely wouldn't want to be a customer at that bank!

I have second hand memory of an SNL sketch from the 80s(?) about this phrasing, but for man, mugged, and five minutes.

Second hand because it was told/ re-enacted to me in lieu of recorded on vhs or similar.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#153

Post by toyg »

randmeerkat wrote: post #73
dantheman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing was affordable because it could still be built.

Maybe, developers could still build high density housing though. From what I’ve been told, developers prefer McMansions because of the profit margins.

That’s an equation with a bunch of factors. As soon as average land costs go over a certain threshold and apartment living is normalized, it becomes much more profitable to build up several units over the same plot of land.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#154

Post by toyg »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #16
paulpauper wrote: post #10

The 80s were a crime paradise.--drug gangs, mafia, wall st white collar crime, informercial scams, televangelist and cult scams --you name it, it all thrived in the 80s.

> The 80s were a crime paradise.--drug gangs, mafia, wall st white collar crime, informercial scams, televangelist and cult scams --you name it, it all thrived in the 80s. All of which you saw in a 30 min episode of CHIPS, which aired in the 70s to the 80s, right? I'm not proud of these seedy days, in fact its something I think most of us are ashamed of entirely and would prefer to be solely known for tech, beaches a…

I guess you’re a subscriber to the famous quote (from Orson Welles, I believe) that goes something like “Italians saw centuries of wars and pestilence, and produced the Renaissance. The Swiss lived peacefully all that time, and only produced the cuckoo clock.”

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#155

Post by doliveira »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #114
npunt wrote: post #65

Whenever the high crime rates in the 70s-90s is brought up I like to remind folks this was likely an aberration with a specific environmental cause (lead), rather than representative of human nature. This [1] is an eye-opening roundup of ~25 major studies that support the lead-crime hypothesis, including comparisons across countries & cultures. The evidence is pretty overwhelming and certainly changed my perspective…

Now consider the lead politics hypothesis. If lead exposure lead to brain damage that resulted in the murder rate tripling, what is that doing to civic politics? Because while that generation has mostly aged out of the higher crime demographic. It's smack in the middle of the voter demographic.

Never had thought of that consequence. Quite a disturbing thought indeed.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#156

Post by CalChris »

ajmurmann wrote: post #94
jeffbee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just bank robbery. Every crime category is now much lower than it was in 1990, in every jurisdiction of the USA. Even if you take a city that people think is ridiculously dangerous, like Camden, New Jersey, the homicide rate was triple 25 years ago.

I keep hearing that crime in rural areas has been going up and that now even cake wrangling is a problem liked in old wild west movies. Your general point that on a lawyer scale we are safer than ever stands Best source short googling could find: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nothing-but-you-and-the-cows-an...

You always hear about Chicago gun violence but that's because Chicago is a dense city. If you correct for population density, rural America is a blood bath.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#157

Post by COGlory »

01100011 wrote: post #139
asveikau wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban I always heard it was events in California (and Diane Feinstein being a key player) that created the ban, but I never heard a specific event in SoCal being the catalyst. Wikipedia cites a school shooting in Stockton in 1989 and an office shooting in San Francisco in 1993. Outside of the state, Wikipedia also cites…

IIRC, the reason the LA heist in the early 90s was so important was that it showed how poorly the police were armed compared to the robbers. That led to a lot of policy changes, I believe.

I believe you are correct, but the real issue was not the firearms the robbers were using, but rather the penetrating power of the police firearms against the robbers' body armor[1]. Because they were both wearing body armor, the two bank robbers were shot a total of 40 times without being killed. (One shot himself and the other bled to death).

Police at that point were mostly using 9mm pistols, .38 caliber revolvers, and 12 gauge shotguns, none of which were capable of penetrating the body armor. More heavily armed police such as SWAT were using MP5s, which shot 9mm as well.

The robbery lead to the distribution of higher velocity firearms like the M16 among the LAPD, and a similar incident in Miami lead to the adoption of the 10mm pistol cartridge by thy FBI.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150702091610/http://www.police...

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#158

Post by nabla9 »

strenholme wrote: post #104
nabla9 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just in the US. Also in Europe and most of the developed world. Violence peaked in 80's - 90s and then started to decrease dramatically. Lead–crime connection is the strongest explanation. Past lead exposure functions as a predictor for criminal activity. Crime starts to drop in every country after the use of leaded gasoline is forbidden. New evidence that lead exposure increases crime https://www.brookings.edu/b…

Another possibility, discussed at depth in Freakonomics , is that reducing unwanted children reduced crime rates. There is some controversy about this, but it may be one of the factors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e...

That possibility can't be the main explanation.

Allowing abortion in the US did not change anything in other countries. Crime rates have dropped in every country shortly after leaded gasoline was phased out.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#159

Post by Dirlewanger »

mschuster91 wrote: post #129
paulpauper wrote: post #10

The 80s were a crime paradise.--drug gangs, mafia, wall st white collar crime, informercial scams, televangelist and cult scams --you name it, it all thrived in the 80s.

> televangelist and cult scams Well... I agree that at least Scientology has died down a little (even though Shelly Miscavige is still missing), but televangelists are as strong as ever, and not just that Kenneth Copeland guy.

What? Scientology has never been stronger. They're on their way to literally owning an entire downtown city in Florida (forget which one).

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#160

Post by bluedino »

tomcam wrote: post #39
DennisP wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to clarify that...the federal Assault Weapons Ban applied to semi-auto rifles with certain ergonomic features, including pistol grips, flash hiders, and folding stocks. (Semi-auto is one bullet per trigger pull, full-auto means you can hold the trigger down and spray bullets.) The North Hollywood robbers had illegally modified their weapons to enable full-auto fire. Since well before 1997, modifying guns like this…

Where do you even buy those pre-86 full autos? Asking for a friend.

Gunbroker.com

Be warned that they cost as much as a car.

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