Something to Sing About From Out on a Ledge

The man on the ledge had one leg dangling over the side, as if inching slowly would make the five-floor fall--his suicide--less painful.

He pushed himself further, both feet now over the side, treading at the empty space below. A small crowd gathered and the Compton police officers spoke to him earnestly. Nothing seemed to get through until he saw the camera’s flash.

He asked the policemen near him who was taking his picture. The question was radioed down and the answer went back: “It’s the L. A. Times, sir.”

The man on the ledge resumed a sitting position. With a strange combination of sign language and words, he indicated that he wanted that woman, the photographer, to come up.

He wanted to talk to her. He wanted the media, he said. He wanted to sing us a song before he died.

A song?

The photographer and I exchanged a look. We were there by chance, working on another story with Compton’s police gang unit; we weren’t looking for this kind of trouble.

She said she didn’t want to end up part of the story. But this wasn’t exactly a story, I reasoned; it wasn’t our assignment. Newspapers generally don’t cover this kind of attention-grabbing stunt. We were here by chance. Maybe fate.

So we followed police to the fifth floor of the Compton Civic Center parking structure.

“I’m not crazy. I am not crazy,” the man on the ledge was telling the police. “But I know it’s hard to convince anybody of that when you’re standing up here on the edge.”

He was articulate. I’ve seen police negotiate with troubled people before, and, in general, they mumble. One sentence does not usually follow rationally to the next.

But this jumper seemed coherent and intelligent. Recently, he had been well-groomed. Under the fine patina of street dirt, anyone could see he had the kind of upstanding good looks that usually open doors.

He talked about a best friend who had committed suicide in New York just weeks ago. He said he had lost everything--family, job, home--and was tired of living on the streets. Bone tired. And cold.

He had just one song to sing before he died, and he wanted my tape recorder so he could sing, then jump.

The officers, trying to induce trust, kept him talking.

Some of his stories were obviously untrue; minor lies concocted to make him more important than just a homeless man on a high ledge. He pretended to be deaf and mute at first, the victim of a Gulf War injury, finally speaking when he couldn’t write fast enough. He said he started a production company with his New York friend to promote the creative ability of homeless people. Apropos of nothing, he announced that “Kick It Productions had everything to do with that gang truce” after the riots.

He said his friend, Victor, had killed himself. Minutes later, he said that same friend froze to death, homeless in the Big Apple snow.

Then he would drop his voice, drop the stories, and shake his head. “Tired of living outdoors,” he said in a near whisper. “Tired of living outside.”

And that rang, all too painfully, true. Compton has two shelters for the homeless, but they only admit women and children. One shelter that allowed men indoors, run by a church, was shut down by the city last April. He was cold, he said, and people looked right past him. As a “bum” he had already ceased to exist.

He became impatient waiting on the ledge and said he was still waiting on that tape. A sergeant standing next to me said, “It’s up to her,” then turned away. The man looked at me, waiting.

If he sang this song into my tape recorder, I asked, what was I supposed to do with it? He told me to send it to Arsenio Hall and every radio and television station in the area. I told him that required expertise in production and distribution, which he had and I didn’t, and that it might happen if he were alive to follow through.

On the tape my voice sounds thin, unconvincing. One officer asked me, politely, to stop talking, to let police take over.

Less than an hour later, he was lured from the ledge. The officers promised him a hot meal and cigarettes and said he could talk to me and my tape recorder.

He was 33, he said, and had grown up in Compton. He had worked for a furniture store, and lived above it with his wife and two children. The store was burned in last spring’s riots, he said, and he used his last dollars to send his family back to Louisiana.

He was embarrassed by his clothing and hygiene and couldn’t look me in the eye. He had no right to talk with me, he said. I murmured some dissent and asked about the song.

This wasn’t a dance tune, he warned, but was only intended to open some minds. Later, some of the officers speculated that he made it up on the spot, as he went along. But he had a fine, rich voice as he sang:

There’s something that I would like to mention,

Listen up close while I’ve got your attention.

It’s a growing epidemic and a very big, big problem,

We have lives to save and the problems, we can solve them.

It’s not a matter of who, when, what, where or how,

We’ve got to help the homeless and help them right now.

This epidemic is growing much too large,

We’ve got to come from the back to the front and take charge.

What we gonna do ... about the homeless?

Take the people off the streets. Out of the cold.

Give them warm hospitality.

And so on.

He had tried to ease himself off that ledge because he was tired of being invisible, of being homeless and a wandering non-person, he said. But when publicity came along, he opted for that instead. Like so many others, he just wanted a little attention.

He was still hoping the song would be heard, maybe by Arsenio Hall, and people would notice. Even if that notice was fleeting, he was certain it could change his life.

The officers got him a meal, gave him a pack of cigarettes and took him to Augustus F. Hawkins Mental Health Center, the psychiatric wing of Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital. He was placed on a 72-hour hold for observation, but was released the next morning.

That next day he called Compton police Lt. Steve Roller with good news: He had found a job as a security guard in downtown Los Angeles and already had a new place to live, he said.

There was just one problem: The security company wanted him to wear a new pair of black shoes on the job. He didn’t have the shoes--or the money to buy them.

Roller told him to come to the station. Later that day, the cop slipped him a $20 bill.

The police haven’t heard from him since.