How We Forget: Watts 50 Years Later

The NYtimes had an article on the improvements in Watts 50 years after the riots.

But Watts — once a symbol of urban strife and racial tensions — stands as a stark contrast. There were fewer than a dozen homicides in the neighborhood last year, compared with hundreds in 1965.

There were something like 700 murders for all of California in 1964.  I can't find a breakdown for LA, much less Watts but I'd suspect that the writer of the article didn't do any research, just assumed that the murder rate was high.  Actually the first half of the 60's saw a low murder rate generally, it started to climb in the late 60's.