Police Reject Flyer Against Panhandlers : Leaflets: Valley Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy says it feeds stereotype of homeless as drug and alcohol abusers.

The San Fernando Valley’s top cop Friday yanked police support from an anti-panhandling campaign that he said unfairly stereotypes the homeless.

Police officers were scheduled today to help North Hills residents and business owners begin distributing about 20,000 leaflets aimed at discouraging giving money to beggars. The joint effort by community members and the Los Angeles Police Department was to be aimed at ridding San Diego Freeway exits at Nordhoff Street and Roscoe Boulevard of panhandlers who police say harass motorists and impede traffic.

But Deputy Chief Martin H. Pomeroy ordered officers from the Devonshire and Van Nuys divisions not to participate after reading the one-page leaflet.

Written by community members and LAPD officers, the leaflet states: “Attention citizens. Please help us in dealing with the vagrant problem in North Hills. Don’t be conned. Most of the money given to vagrants goes to purchase alcohol and/or narcotics.”

Pomeroy criticized the leaflet Friday, saying: “It seems to make stereotypical statements that in our hypersensitive times could be misinterpreted. We don’t believe that all homeless people are drug addicts and alcoholics.”

Pomeroy said he ordered officers to revise the leaflet, which will be distributed later this month, and pledged his support for a police crackdown on aggressive panhandlers.

Advocates for the homeless heartily applauded Pomeroy’s decision to scrap the original leaflet.

“Good for him, that’s just great,” said Nat Hutton, executive director of the Los Angeles Family Housing Corp., which runs several homeless shelters in the Valley. “I don’t think taking a derogatory approach to the homeless is the right way to go about it.”

“That sounds like a very progressive attitude by law enforcement,” said Jeff Schaffer, executive director of the nonprofit Shelter Partnership.

About 100 local residents and business owners who had planned to distribute the leaflets today have agreed to rewrite them to mollify Pomeroy, said Flip Smith, president of the Sepulveda Boulevard Business Watch group. But in the coming months, merchants still plan to distribute the original leaflets, which cost $90 to print, without the help of police officers, he said.

The community also plans to erect signs that say, “Don’t Patronize the Vagrants,” some of whom live beneath the freeway underpasses, Smith said.

“We thought we had a great idea, a very innocent and good one,” Smith said. “You have to realize there is a difference between vagrants and the homeless. Most of the people here are using the money to buy drugs and alcohol.”

“We’re not talking about people who just stand there with a sign asking for money,” agreed Capt. Vance Proctor, head of the Devonshire station. “These people have criminal records for narcotics, they are aggressive and repetitive in their panhandling and they scare people.”

Pomeroy agreed that North Hills has a “significant panhandling problem” and pledged his support for a new Devonshire Division initiative dubbed the Aggressive Repetitive Panhandling Program, or ARPP, as it is known in LAPD argot.

Under ARPP, officers will first warn beggars who impede traffic or harass motorists that they are at risk of being arrested under the city’s public nuisance law, a misdemeanor violation, Proctor said. Panhandlers who persist in aggressive behavior will be arrested and as a condition of their release on probation must agree not to return to the same location to beg, he said.

“After street narcotics, panhandling is probably the thing people here complain the most about,” Proctor said.

But homeless advocates urged police to consider less Draconian alternatives, including contacting the city of Los Angeles’ Community Development Department, which provides on-site counseling and referral services to the homeless out of a bus-like vehicle.

“Any effort to relocate homeless people, including panhandlers, should include offering them alternatives,” said Schaffer, adding that there are an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles County every night and only about 12,000 shelter beds available. “Otherwise, no matter how nicely you tell them to go away, it won’t work because they have no place to go.”

Gloria Stevenson Clark, the city’s director of human services, urged police and community members to contact her to arrange a field visit of the counseling-and-referral vehicle.