It is crazy how many areas are 'going bad'. Where I grew up, I'm one of only five in the neighborhood that didn't go to prison, and I suppose the percentage is nearly as high among the black and mexican guys. It was a rough place, but a good place, to grow up. Much changed in the mid-80s with the crack epidemic, though most that I knew were already making, selling and using speed before that. To many friends that disappeared or that are in prison over all that. Founding members of the AB came from there, as did the acting head of the Mexican Mafia, and a ranking member of the BGF. THAT was one hell of a high school class.
I lived in Phoenix, which is hell, except warmer. There is not, to my knowledge, one area in Phoenix where you can leave something outside overnight and not have to buy a new one the next day. Now I live in Montana. In Bozeman they have drug rings and gang graffiti. Butte, where I live, has always been kind of rough. In comparison it isn't much but...the cancer spreads.
Growing up many people I knew/know associated that 'cancer' with ethnic minorities. But in the early part of the century in this country the criminals were predominantly Jewish or Irish or Italian or whatever group happened to be the most 'have-not' at the time.
It is curious to me that so many places have problems with the biker gangs. I grew up a stone's throw from where the most famous of them was begun. We ran them out in the late 70s and early 80s over some transgression that had to do with the race wars in the state prisons at the time. They behave well if properly contained.