Watch the video exclusive surveillance tape of murdered casita victim Rosa Garcia.

All along busy Florence Avenue, between Halldale and South Denker, two blocks from the corner where riots erupted over the Rodney King jury verdict in 1992, the air is pungent with the smell of onions and corn tortillas rising from Vicki’s Tacos, a silver lunch truck. On very late weekend nights, there’s usually a line for her tacos once the nearby clubs, El Tiburon and El Nuevo Reno, close, at 2 a.m.

For eight years, Victoria Cortes has fed the after-hours crowd from the same spot, making hers one of the rare businesses still operating on the 1500 block of Florence — openly operating businesses, that is. The others are a tire shop, and a liquor store whose night employee peers out from behind a bulletproof partition. The rest of the storefronts — a sewing shop, hair salon, church hall and 99-cent store — are shuttered. The gloomy alleyways that parallel Florence Avenue attract “street elk” — horribly mangy dogs forgotten by society, which dash between the buildings like coyotes hunting a meal.

The area is a testament to urban decay, gang domination and municipal neglect. Now, it’s the center of a strange new wave of south of the border–style lawlessness. “Casitas” are the problem, though most L.A. residents have never heard of them.