The library wanted this book back before I could finish it. My rating/review is based on finishing about 75% of it.

I thought “ghettoside” was a play on “homicide” – death caused by living in a ghetto (yeah, OK, I got the suffix wrong, “-cide” vs. “-side”). However, “ghettoside” is a place, as in “westside.”

Keep in mind that I read this book amidst almost daily news reports about portray trigger-happy police officers. The author, Jill Leovy, seems to be trying very hard to show that most cops are not racist. She focuses on Detective Tennelle, "that rare officer who actually lived the philosophy so long advanced by LAPD critics: he had chosen to live in the city he policed out of valor and a sense of responsibility.” This is one reason why cultural-socio-economic inequality is so difficult to overcome:

“To many officers, black residents of these ghettoside neighborhoods seemed so incomprehensibly perverse and hostile, so hell-bent on not making things better for themselves. And that same “community” bristled and postured in response. Yet beneath all this dysfunction, just as the cops yearned to be do-gooders who “helped people,” the “community” yearned for their help.”

Leovy describes how the community members take matters into their own hands when they feel they are not served by law enforcement officers or the criminal justice system; community justice frequently escalates into a cycle of retribution.

In addition to describing the murders, Leovy also provides a look at how ghettoside women are treated. Mothers seem to be granted some measure of respect, but girlfriends are temporary and disposable. One young man “expected blind obedience, and he mostly got it by merely implying the violence of which [his girlfriend] knew he was capable.” This made me think of how southern slave owners treated the enslaved--a terrible perpetuation of a terrible mindset.