Downtown’s Troublesome Pocket of Crime : Pimps, Panderers and Pushers Make This Stretch of 7th Avenue Home Turf

Amid the upscale commercial development that is Horton Plaza and the emerging Gaslamp Quarter, crime still holds fast to one small corner of the downtown business district.

On 7th Avenue between Market Street and Island Avenue, a young, one-eyed addict named Washington sells crack out of a doorway.

Linda turns tricks in an $18-a-day room at the Coast Hotel, her home after she moved here from Hawaii.

Down 7th saunters Kimberly, a transvestite prostitute who began life as William. A knife is strapped to her waist. “For protection,” she said.

Up the avenue comes Albert Lee. “I got two first names,” he said, slurring his words as he staggers, tumbles, rattles and rolls to the next liquor store.

Crime’s Last Stand?

The one-block stretch is a stink among the changing face of downtown--overrun day and night by whores, drug addicts, dope dealers, transients, illegal aliens, the homeless and mentally ill patients turned out of government programs.

Police say the street has become crime’s last stand in the downtown area, where much of the old riffraff that once collected like last night’s dregs along Broadway is slowly being forced out by Horton Plaza shops, Gaslamp boutiques, expensive condominiums, office towers and glitzy hotels.

“The Police Department would like nothing more than to see this block leveled,” said James Filley, the police community services officer for the Gaslamp area.

Filley wears a suit and tie to work. He meets with downtown businessmen and shopkeepers, visits with residents, hears their complaints about the spillover of crime from 7th into the shopping areas. He tries to answer their questions, ease their frustrations, assuage their fears.

On Fridays, he wears his uniform and walks the beat, ultimately heading over to 7th. He straps on his gun, adjusts his bullet-proof vest and, before closing the door to his Gaslamp storefront office, points to a photograph from the funeral earlier this year of murdered Police Officer Jerry Hartless.

“I keep that there to remind me how sometimes we spin our wheels down here,” he said. “And also to remind me how important our job really is.”

Filley was barely out the door before he reached 6th Avenue and Market, where a barber and a deli worker complained about a bum lying in a shop doorway. The man had passed out, with a can of beer in his hand. Filley leaned over the man, and realized that the man had also defecated over himself.

“See what I mean?” he said. “No wonder they complain.”

Police records show that in June of this year there were 82 crimes reported in the Gaslamp Quarter, bounded roughly by Broadway to L Street, 4th to 7th avenues. Twenty-five percent of those crimes--mostly assaults, drug violations and robberies--occurred along 7th between Market and Island.

“These drug dealers are not necessarily gang members,” Filley said. “They’re downtown ‘businessmen.’ And to be honest, they work longer hours than I do.”

They also prey on the honest working citizens.

Craig Lee, executive director of the Gaslamp Quarter Council, said his business members are constantly complaining about the criminal element spilling off the street at 7th and into the doorways and sidewalks of their storefronts.

“A lot of money is going into downtown from the City Council,” Lee said. “But the council also needs to follow that money with an increase in police staffing. The police need help. We need another walking patrol. We need police on the street down here at night and on the weekend.”

Trying to Get Along

Roy L. Smith, owner of AAA Sales International, has taken the brazen stand of trying to make a living selling restaurant supplies at 7th and Market. His problems have been multifold.

Clients complain about dodging drug dealers and prostitutes to get inside his shop. They even worry about leaving their cars parked briefly outside.

As for Smith, he tries to get along.

He sometimes allows illegal aliens and homeless persons to toss a duffel bag over his back fence and sleep the night. He chain-smokes Camels and keeps an extra pack in his pocket for the bums who hit him up out front. He carries loose change for other panhandlers. And he shakes his head politely to the come-ons from prostitutes and drug dealers.

“I can stand on the corner here and see 50 dope dealers in one hour,” he said. “The only time you can’t see it done is when a police car drives by.”

It is the action on the street that is most remarkable.

One-eyed Washington has worked the corner of 7th and Market since he lost his construction job in January. He said he buys and sells crack and from afar, police can see him passing drugs from under his shirt and stashing cash in his shoes. When the policeman approaches, Washington walks on.

“I’m not making any money,” he said. “I go to jail at least twice a week.”

Asked what happened to his left eye, he said: “You got to know who to mess with and who not to mess with. That’s what happened to me. One thing leads to another and you get physical confrontation.”

‘Pick a Crime’

The corner of 7th and Island is anchored by the old three-story pale yellow Coast Hotel, home to one-trick prostitutes, routine dope deals and constant police surveillance. In a three-month period this spring, police responded to 39 complaint calls at the Coast, made 37 arrests and conducted 277 field interviews.

“The Coast is everything,” Filley said. “Pick a crime.”

At 3:30 on a Thursday afternoon, 34-year-old Linda from Hawaii is just waking up to a knock at her door on the second floor. Swinging open the door in an orange bathrobe, she popped a chocolate in her mouth. Her room is a bed and a dresser, with a torn towel partially covering the window. The bed is very well worn.

Down the hall, Carolyn was singing to herself inside her room. She too answered a knock, and then complained how the county bureaucracy had run out of money and dumped her and other people with mental problems back on the street. Since being turned out of a government program for the mentally ill, she worries about the crime around her and how she can survive on her $630 a month government subsistence check--$280 of which goes to the Coast. At 37, she looks 73.

“I have no money,” she said. “It’s a very, very bad and horrible situation. I don’t know what’s going to happen after I go to bed at night.”

Lee Howard, 66, owner of the hotel, knows his building attracts criminals and endangers the safety of others who live there. He said he put a half million dollars into the hotel six or seven years ago, remodeling the bathrooms, installing heat and air-conditioning and trucking down used furniture he bought in Sacramento.

All to no avail.

‘Somebody Tears It Up’

“You fix it up and fix it up and as soon as you do, somebody tears it up,” he said. “And then there’s a murder out front.”

That is Howard’s response to critics who complain he allows the Coast to serve as a haven to crime. If the building were cleaned up or torn down, the crooks would move to another part of town.

“Maybe yours,” he said.

Howard said that last week, he and a city inspector stood out back of the hotel and watched the drug dealing. He said he also found a body in the hotel.

“Some weeks ago an old drunk got inside, slipped in the door and died right there in the hallway,” he said. “He didn’t live there, but slipped in with another tenant and we had a dead man in the doorway. I don’t mean any harm, but I do wish he had gone somewhere else.”

E. L. Scholder had the same problem, until--against his will--the city fixed it for him. He owns a large used car, salvage and Formica lot at 7th and Market. For years, the city has fought him in court, declaring his lot a nuisance and trying to get him to clean it up.

Over the years, drug dealers, addicts, homeless and illegal aliens have used his junked cars as home. They sleep there at night. Just two weeks ago, the city declared the cars a nuisance and towed two dozen of them away.

But Joseph M. Schilling, head deputy city attorney for code enforcement, said it is likely more rusted cars will be dumped there.

“We’re just trying to reform his property to reduce crime,” the lawyer said. “Where there is crime, there are broken windows and dilapidated houses. So if you can clean up an area, you can clean up crime.”

Living with Frustration

Scholder is unimpressed.

Standing in his lot, amid the junked debris, discarded clothing, broken glass and used condoms, the 72-year-old man in dark-blue overalls rails against all those around him.

He hates the city for taking his cars. He hates the street denizens for sleeping in them. He hates the cops for harassing him. He said he hates blacks and Hispanics because he says they commit all the crimes on the block. Halfway through the interview, he decides he hates the Los Angeles Times too.

“I’m going to fight this in the street,” he said.

From above, in a third-floor loft at 7th and Island, Scott Kaisler scans these and other street scenes below. Kaisler, a former Del Mar attorney, now tends bar next to Horton Plaza and “urban homesteads” at his 5,000-square-foot loft. He lives there because “maybe I like experiencing life on the raw edge.”

With binoculars in hand, he often climbs to the roof and watches the drug dealing and prostitution and strong-arm robberies below.

“It’s a hopeless situation,” he said.

A situation that has touched him personally, too. One night, 50 homeless people found a way inside his building, then started a fire in the hallway to keep warm. Once, he surprised a burglar near the top of the building’s fire escape. On another night, he came home from work and counted 37 people smoking crack outside his front door.

“They looked at me and then went right back to their dealing,” he said. “Like I didn’t matter. Like I was invisible.”