Fashion District Group Agrees to Settle Homeless Lawsuit

A downtown business group has reached an out-of-court settlement with homeless residents who said they had been harassed and assaulted by private security guards patrolling downtown streets.

Though it admits no wrongdoing, the Fashion District Business Improvement District and its security contractor, Burns International Security Services Corp., agreed that its yellow-shirted private security teams will not search, photograph, request identification from or order homeless people to “move along” from public streets, officials said. The settlement makes permanent an interim agreement reached last year in an attempt to settle the dispute out of court.

The terms of the settlement are scheduled to be announced today in a news conference at the Fashion District BID’s downtown office.

“We’re pleased that we’ve found a way to address everyone’s concerns . . . and that we no longer have a lawsuit hanging over our heads,” said Kent Smith, the district’s executive director.

The agreement does not apply to three other downtown business improvement districts--the Toytown, Downtown Industrial District and Historic Core BIDs--and their security contractors, which also were targeted by homeless plaintiffs in a 1999 class-action lawsuit.

That suit, the first of its kind in the nation, alleges that downtown property owners, through their support of the business improvement districts, bankrolled a “systematic, concerted campaign” to chase homeless people off public property in violation of their civil liberties.

Skid-row indigents complained that they were roughed up, interrogated and falsely imprisoned by private guards, who have proliferated on downtown Los Angeles streets.

Homeless activist Alice Callaghan, an Episcopal priest who helped negotiate the settlement with the Fashion District BID, said she is pleased with the agreement.

“They responded swiftly to our complaints,” Callaghan said. “It shows that what we are asking from the others is reasonable.”

In addition to agreeing not to photograph, interrogate, search or order homeless residents to move along, the Fashion District BID also agreed to provide food and clothing vouchers of $600 each to two of the homeless plaintiffs.

Callaghan said private security teams from the other three BIDs named in the litigation continue to harass homeless residents in violation of the interim agreement reached last year. She said the next step will be to proceed to trial.

Tracey Lovejoy, executive director of the Central City East Assn., which operates the Toytown and Downtown Industrial District BIDs, denied that her group’s security teams have violated the agreement.

“We feel we are in full compliance,” Lovejoy said. “We would love to have the opportunity to accept the settlement agreement offered to the Fashion District” BID.