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by Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff Writer(courtesy of Michael Novick)
Capping a two-week effort to demolish a homeless encampment near the
Harbor Freeway, Los Angeles police arrested 25 people early Friday morning
and knocked down more than a dozen makeshift tents along James M. Wood
Boulevard.
The action, part of the LAPD's effort to remove homeless encampments in
parts of downtown, was criticized by homeless advocates but applauded by
businesses leaders pushing to clean up the streets.
"This is something that has progressed over the last couple of months into
a serious public safety issue," said Rampart Division Capt. Charlie Beck.
Police officials said they had recently noticed an increase in
prostitution, drug use and burglaries from vehicles as well as more
citizen complaints. Beck said he also worried that cars coming off the
freeway could jump the curb and hit homeless people sleeping on the
sidewalk.
"I tried as best as I know how to get people into services," Beck said.
"We tried to alleviate the problem without making arrests, but if people
won't respond to our efforts to comply willingly to the law, then we
enforce the law."
On Dec. 29, police scattered about 100 residents camped out on a Golden
Avenue cul-de-sac near the Dome Village homeless shelter. On Jan. 10,
police visited a cluster of tents that had sprung up about a block from
the old encampment and waited until residents packed up.
Officials at the Los Angeles Housing Authority said they had tried for
months to get people living near the intersection of Golden Avenue and
James M. Wood Boulevard into shelters or public programs. Few accepted.
On their last visit Wednesday, Housing Authority officials persuaded one
man who had left a shelter to return, but everyone else turned down their
services, said program manager Jeannette Rowe.
According to witnesses, a caravan of police cars drove in at about 5:30
a.m. while most of the homeless residents were sleeping.
"I was sitting on the curb and 10 police cars swooped up," said a
43-year-old woman who declined to give her name because she feared police
harassment. "They told people to get out of their tents and handcuffed
them.
"They tore everything down," she added, "and told people they were taking
them all to jail for sleeping on the sidewalk, and me for sitting on the
sidewalk."
All of those at the encampment was taken into custody, she said.
Pulling a citation slip out of the pocket of her loose-fitting black
jacket, the woman said she was the only one released from jail. A doctor
authorized her release, she said, because she required medication for
blood clots in her leg.
Bob Coffman was cleaning his motor home, parked a block west of the
encampment, when he saw the police cars pass. "It looked like a parade,"
he said.
Coffman, 50, said he and his wife, Maggie, had been visiting friends at
the encampment the night before and cooked them soup on a propane stove.
The couple backed out of the street when police arrived, but had returned
around noon to pick up friends' belongings. They had planned to store the
items at Dome Village until their friends returned.
"Look, there are already other homeless people scavenging," Coffman said,
pointing to a handful of men and women who were loading up a shopping
cart. "They're not from here. This always happens after a sweep."
Homeless advocate Lisa McLaughlin Strassman was taking pictures and
retrieving Bibles, purses, photographs and other items left behind by
police.
"It's a pitiful sight," she said. "They're cleansing the city, making it
trendy and making it hip for the loft district. What happens to the
homeless people on the streets? They've got to go somewhere."
Strassman was working with Ted Hayes, who has been trying since last May
to establish a legal homeless encampment outside Dome Village and on other
vacant land around the city.
Hayes condemned city officials for selective enforcement of the law.
"Homelessness is going on all over L.A., but this is a high-visibility
area," he said.
A sweep here might look good, he said, but it won't solve the root
problems of scarce affordable housing, health insurance and jobs.
"Someone might take assistance but in two to three days, they're back on
the street," Hayes said. "They're either in someone else's neighborhood or
back at the same site they were evicted from."
Some cheered the latest action, however.
Few would tolerate homeless encampments in Westwood or Brentwood, said
Carol Schatz, who heads a downtown business group. "So why is it tolerated
downtown?" she challenged.
"It is absolutely inappropriate for people in a civil society to be living
on the street," said Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central
City Assn. "And it really violates everyone's right, including those of
the people living on the street, to be living in their own waste in very
unsanitary conditions.
"Public right of ways are for everyone, so it is, in our view, appropriate
for the police to be making the sidewalks safe," she said.
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