Mayor Orders Probe of Skid Row Dumping

Saying it’s clear that downtown Los Angeles has become “a dumping ground for a number of jurisdictions in the county,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has ordered an investigation into the practice of outside law enforcement agencies bringing homeless people, criminals and others to skid row against their will.

Villaraigosa said Monday he wants City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo to look into “what are the legal recourses we have where jurisdictions -- including, but not limited to, law enforcement agencies -- purposefully drop off the homeless in our city.”

He also wants to examine whether the city should beef up its own ordinances to crack down on the practice.

The investigation is the latest fallout from charges by a Los Angeles Police Department captain last week that he watched two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies drop off a mentally ill man who had just been released from county jail onto skid row.

The captain said it was one of numerous incidences that he and his officers have seen over the years of law enforcement agencies dumping people downtown.

He cited four suburban police departments specifically -- Burbank, El Monte, El Segundo and Pasadena -- though all the agencies denied their officers dropped people off downtown.

On Monday, Villaraigosa said he has not discussed the issue with Sheriff Lee Baca, but stressed that he views the issue as being broader than just the one incident involving the sheriff’s deputies.

“This isn’t about Lee Baca or the county, it’s about any jurisdiction,” he said.

Baca, who has defended the deputies’ actions, said Monday he would meet with members of the Central City East Assn., which represents business interests in the downtown toy and industrial districts.

The group’s president last week demanded an apology from Baca.

The sheriff said the incident brought up larger issues in the state regarding treatment of homeless and mentally ill people, who often are cycled through the criminal justice system.

“California, like other states, through a variety of reasons has quite frankly turned its back on mentally ill people who are homeless,” Baca said. “The jail, therefore, becomes the most certain place for people who act out for treatment.”

Baca said he has been working with judges, advocates for the homeless and others to address the problems of a criminal justice system that has become overburdened by a burgeoning number of people with mental illnesses.

“The system currently in Los Angeles is improving,” Baca said, “but the volume defeats the gains.”

Asked about the incident last week, Baca said that “at the end of the day, not only do I deserve some blame, but so does every elected official in L.A. County.”

The dumping issue is complicated by the fact that many services for homeless people are concentrated in just a few locations in Los Angeles County, notably downtown and Santa Monica.

It’s no surprise, some experts said, that those two areas have in the past complained that outsiders have dumped homeless people at their doorstep.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes most of downtown, criticized the “historic lack of political will on the part of other cities [that] have actively not sought to build support services, and housing with mental services or transitional housing ... even though many of the people who come to services down here come from other communities.”

The centralization of social services, said Adlai Wertman, president of Chrysalis, which operates programs in Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles, has had unintended consequences, especially in downtown’s skid row.

“I’m a believer that there should absolutely be no more new services downtown,” Wertman said. “And that while the idea of centralizing services might have been a good idea at the time, the overwhelming amount of services that exist downtown has created as close as I can imagine to hell.”

Both downtown and Santa Monica, said Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver, have a “tradition of having professional services” for the homeless.

But, he said, “There ought to be somebody smarter than me to monitor services for mental health so they don’t get all localized in downtown or some other specific place.”

Shriver suggested that the region needs to have an organization similar to the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which draws up regional plans for transportation, housing and growth management.

While admitting that it is still “a half-baked idea,” he said such an organization could set standards for how resources for the homeless should be distributed and penalize municipalities that do not carry their fair share.

“What I do know,” Shriver said, “is that people have got to work together, or this thing is not ever going to get better.”

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Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.