Raids Clear Out 2 Camps of Homeless

Police and Los Angeles sanitation workers raided two homeless encampments near City Hall without warning Friday and carted away two truckloads of the street people’s belongings to a dump.

Several homeless men said they tried to stop city workers from taking the property, which belonged to about 50 homeless people, many of whom were having breakfast at nearby missions, but police told them they could only save their own belongings.

The raid came one week after the group was driven from a state-owned site where they had been camping for months. After state authorities shut down the camp as a health hazard, much of the group remained on the sidewalk on 1st Street, between Broadway and Spring Street, and on the steps of City Hall.

Taken to Landfill

The items were taken to the Lopez Canyon landfill in the San Fernando Valley, where they were buried, said Donovan Hanson, assistant director of the city’s Bureau of Sanitation. Both encampments were less than a week old.

“We didn’t know if it was trash or what. Our people didn’t have any instructions whether to save it or not so we assumed it was like other debris and would go to the dump,” Hanson said.

“We were just following orders,” said David Reed, assistant director of the Sanitation Bureau.

The homeless people said they lost blankets, clothes, medicine and identification papers, as well as radios and toolboxes.

“People won’t have clothing to change into tomorrow or a blanket to wrap themselves in tonight,” said Tyrone Blake, one of the homeless people who had been staying at the 1st Street site. “They said their orders were to take everything.”

Michael Ray Johnson said the sweep was a “sneak attack with no kind of warning whatsoever.” One man, who angrily refused to give his name, said, “They hauled away every . . . piece of clothes I had.”

Hanson said he was aware that some valuables were among the items, which were placed in a dump truck and a pickup truck but added that workers did not try to separate the belongings.

“I asked them to give me five minutes” to get the owners, said Blake, who was on the south lawn of City Hall when the officers and city sanitation workers arrived about 8:30 a.m. “They told me that wasn’t their order.

“A few (homeless) people came and said, ‘We’ll take everybody’s belongings,’ but they wouldn’t let us. They wouldn’t wait,” he said.

Police Sgt. Rod Luckenbach said the items were taken because they had been “abandoned.”