Buscaino, LAPD officers clean up empty land in South LA



imageCouncilman Joe Buscaino from District 15, joined law enforcement officers and other community activists Saturday to clean up an empty plot of land near 103rd Street and Grandee Avenue in Watts.

The plot was overgrown with weeds and had become a “magnet for trash, vermin and homeless encampments,” according to a release by Buscaino’s office.

“Enough is enough,” Buscaino said in the release. “We need to respond to the community’s concerns here. This is a main thoroughfare for students in the area. For them to see all this trash…completely unacceptable.”

Busciano was approached at the beginning of the month at a meeting of the Watts Gang Task Force and was joined at the cleanup by officers from LAPD’s Southeast Division, members of the Southeast Division Spanish Community Police and Advisory Board, the Watts Gang Task Force, LA Conservation Corps and the Bureau of Street Services.

“A cleanup like this, organized like this, hasn’t been done in years,” said Robert Martinez, Senior Lead Officer for LAPD’s Southeast Division, in the release.

He noted that a cleaner plot of land would bring positive changes to the lives of nearby middle school students who see the plot every day and will no longer have to look at signs of poverty and crime.