Operation Aimed at Homeless Draws Criticism

One week after they were courted like celebrities for inclusion in the U.S. census, scores of homeless people in Hollywood found themselves displaced Wednesday in an enforcement action that focused on area streets and a dozen freeway encampments.

The operation, described as a sweep by critics but as outreach by authorities, began in the morning with California Department of Transportation crews methodically clearing one site after another before about two dozen Los Angeles police officers fanned out to parks and other local congregation sites for the homeless.

LAPD Cmdr. Michael Downing of the Hollywood Division said: “Our intent is not to go out and arrest [the] homeless, because it is not a crime to be homeless. It is to vacate the abandoned buildings . . . and address the homeless transient issue and the community complaints.”

City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said: “I’m astounded that my office had no notification of this. My view is that this is a pretty drastic action . . . and my experience with these things is that they don’t do anything but just move the homeless around and scare them to death.”

Downing expressed surprise that the enforcement action drew any attention or criticism, saying his officers launched a similar effort March 16.

During that operation, he said, officers did arrest five people on outstanding felony warrants but referred others to social service agencies and reunited two missing juveniles with their families.

“This is not a sweep,” he said. “It is an outreach.”

But that view was not shared by the homeless or their advocates, who said they were especially dismayed at the prospects of arrests, even for non-felony offenses.

“We’re troubled,” said Joel Roberts, executive director of People Assisting the Homeless, a nonprofit agency that has worked with the homeless in the area for 16 years. “It does not solve anything [except] just put more homeless on the street.”

Although they supported Cmdr. Downing’s efforts at reaching out to the community and to agencies serving youths, staff members at the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles also said they were disturbed.

“We are extremely concerned about displacing youth, compromising their legal rights and disrupting their connection to appropriate services and support,” said Susan Rabinovitz, the adolescent medicine division’s associate director.

A 50-year-old artist known as Cookie California, moments after she and a dozen others were rousted from their trash-strewn surroundings beneath the Hollywood Freeway, said she might stay with her mother or an ex-neighbor temporarily.

“I may have some places to go,” she said. “I’m more nervous [about] the other people. Where are they gonna go?”

A mile north, a woman who identified herself only as Lisa braced for the prospect that she might also be moved from her tarp-covered shelter on an embankment above the freeway, where she has lived for six years.

“I think it’s unconstitutional,” Lisa, 51, said above the din of cars speeding along the freeway below. “They say being homeless is not a crime . . . [and] if my neighbors were upset, you think I would have lasted here this long?”