Inglewood Relishing All-America City Status

Civic pride is on the upsurge in Inglewood this week, after city officials brought the prestigious All-America City Award home to the self-proclaimed “City of Champions.” Inglewood won the award, given annually by the National Civic League, after a grueling two-day competition in Chicago, emerging as one of 10 winning cities from a field that originally included 109 applicants.

At Inglewood City Hall, hopes are high that the award will go a long way toward polishing the city’s image.

City officials said they will use the honor to publicize Inglewood as a middle-class, multi-ethnic city where residents and officials have successfully joined together to reduce crime rates and beat back drug dealers.

The city will advertise the award by adding the “All-America” designation to everything from official city stationery to street signs and the prominent “Welcome to Inglewood” sign that greets visitors at the city’s Manchester Boulevard entrance, officials said.

“You’ll definitely know you’re in an All-America city,” said Mayor Edward Vincent. “We’re going to have it on our driveways, our storefronts--we’re going to have it everywhere that we’re an All-America city.”

Undeserved Reputation

Inglewood was the only city in California to receive the honor.

In their written application for the award, city officials said Inglewood has traditionally battled against an undeservedly bad reputation.

“The community suffers from an inferiority complex not of their own making,” the application read. “Partly because of the relatively high crime rate, but mostly because of a Southern California perception that it is higher than it really is, some people are embarrassed or reluctant to admit they live in Inglewood or work there.”

In fact, crime rates are declining in Inglewood, city officials said. For example, there were 499 narcotics arrests from May to July of 1987, but by the same period in 1988 that figure had declined by about 30%, to 346 arrests, after the city implemented a “reverse sting” undercover police program to catch drug buyers, said Assistant City Manager Norman Cravens.

The Inglewood Police Department, city officials and private companies then collaborated on an advertising campaign to publicize the program, Cravens said. So far, the Inglewood Police Department has made more than 300 buyer arrests in 19 reverse sting operations, officials said.

Officials from the Denver-based organization that sponsors the award praised Inglewood for that program and others developed by city officials, residents and the Police Department within the last year to combat drug dealing and gang activity.

Anti-Crime Unit

“We look for communities that have a strong capacity for problem-solving,” said Tamara Davis, the league’s program coordinator. “Inglewood has definitely shown that they do.”

The league cited Inglewood’s formation of a 20-officer unit to fight street crime--approved by 78% of the voters in a proposition last November. The proposition allowed officials to increase taxes to fund the $1.4-million program.

The league also extolled Inglewood’s anti-drug efforts, including its Drug Abuse Resistance Education program (DARE) to prevent drug abuse among schoolchildren.

Last year, Inglewood was a finalist in the competition but didn’t win.

This year, city officials boned up on public-speaking techniques to improve their presentation before the jury and also highlighted new programs that were not in place a year ago, Vincent said.

The mood was jubilant at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, where a certificate and plaque from the National Civic League were on display. Officials played videotapes of their presentation before the 11-member National Civic League jury in Chicago and recessed briefly to celebrate the award with cake and coffee.

“We’ve worked hard, but we’ve got to work harder to stay on top,” Vincent said.

Juvenile Court Judge Roosevelt Dorn, who was among eight officials and residents representing the city at the competition, said Inglewood “gets a black eye for (crimes) that aren’t even committed in Inglewood.”

With the award in hand, however, residents and officials are hopeful of a more clean-cut image for the city.

“I think it will be just a tremendous boost to the morale of many of the citizens in the community,” Dorn said.