41 Homeless File Claim Over Seized Belongings

A group of 41 homeless men and women filed a claim against the City of Los Angeles on Monday seeking compensation for damages and a reform of city policy, after a police raid on their street encampment last week.

The incident--in which their belongings were loaded into a dump truck and hauled away--was one of the more visible in a continuing series of similar police sweeps downtown.

In the claim filed with the city clerk, attorney James Davis argued that the raid constituted an “unlawful seizure” that violated both the federal and state constitutions.

The police action was disapproved by the mayor’s office Monday as being “outside accepted city policy,” said spokeswoman Dede Meyers. That policy, formally adopted by the City Council a year ago, requires police to notify the council before any “encampments” are swept.

In the Friday sweep, police said they gave no notice to any city agency, except the Department of Sanitation, which was asked to supply two skip loaders and two dump trucks to scoop up and remove the belongings of about 50 street people.

The indigents had been camped on the sidewalk along 1st Street between Broadway and Spring Street for about a week after having been driven from the site of the former State Building by state police.

They Lost Everything

Members of the camp group said they lost everything--from medicine and identification papers to clothing, small appliances and bed rolls in the sweep. They also said police did not give them any notice of the action.

Police said they gave the street people 30 minutes to clear out their gear, but those who were away--finding a meal, or looking for day labor--returned to find all of their possessions gone.

Sgt. Rod Luckenbach, who supervised the action, said notice was not required, because the assemblage of homeless was not strictly considered an “encampment” under city policy.

“This does not fall within the parameters,” he said.

An encampment, he said, requires more obvious signs of permanency than were evident Friday.

But neither Luckenbach, nor any other city official--from Community Development homeless coordinators, to Deputy Mayor Mike Gage, to the city attorney’s office--could define precisely what an encampment is and when giving notice of a sweep is necessary.

In a year of nearly continual sweeping of Skid Row sidewalks, the police have not once found it necessary to notify the council under the homeless policy, authorities said.

“That stuff (the city policy on notice) is no longer in force,” said Capt. Greg Berg of the Central Division. “This is just a matter of regularly cleaning up downtown. We don’t need to notify anybody.”

Still, Gage said, the sweep was an “aberration. . . . It should not have happened that way.”

The deputy mayor said any property seized by cleaning crews should be held for an appropriate period so that the owner has an opportunity to reclaim it.

Activists’ Allegations

Homeless activists say the sweep was anything but an aberration. For months, they say, police have been routinely working in conjunction with sanitation crews in the Skid Row area east of downtown.

At a news conference on the steps of City Hall, attorney Davis said he and his clients hope to use legal action as a means to negotiating new guidelines that would require police and sanitation crews to give street dwellers notice of planned sweeps. If unsuccessful, Davis said, he plans to file a civil rights suit in federal court.