Yet residents seem by and large to see the police as arbiters and protectors, and Watts bears little resemblance to the crime-ridden hellhole of 20 years ago.
For a nonchewer, nonsmoker, she looks upon the upstairs room allotted to her as a hellhole, smelly, the walls green from the spit of the chewers, the crannies stuffed with the plant's unchewed stems.
Though it now seems hard to believe, this pretty town was once known as 'the hellhole of the Pacific' - a magnet for convicts fleeing Australia, and whalers and sailors too drunk to return to sea.
Don't let Tom Bodett kid you: a room at the 'lowest price of any national chain' is not a good thing if you're checking into a voodoo hellhole where there's a good risk of something bad happening to you.