A New Perspective Along Skid Row

William Bratton and George Kelling’s March 11 commentary, “The LAPD Is Targeting Crime on Skid Row, Not the Homeless,” is an accurate assessment of what skid row is facing today. We do not need more lawsuits from those well-meaning but unproductive attempts at fixing the problems of homelessness any more than we need lawsuits against the city to stop legitimate and needed law enforcement. No one deserves to live in degrading squalor and filth -- and menace their neighbors. The community has the responsibility to provide safe streets, even for the people who choose no other place to go, even with available options. We have the responsibility to help the less fortunate find those options.

A permissive approach, while perhaps appealing to the humaneness in all of us, does little to provide meaningful assistance to those so needing it; assistance such as food, beds, showers, clothing and long-term programs (all supported by gifts from the private sector) are so much more restorative than mere words and lawsuits. We support the work of the Los Angeles Police Department as it continues to enforce the laws of our community built on a foundation of “compassion and sensitivity to the special needs and conditions that the truly homeless face.”

Marshall McNott

President

Los Angeles Mission

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Bratton and Kelling’s commentary should be reformatted verbatim into a legal brief to be filed with the court in opposition to the ACLU lawsuit challenging the LAPD’s skid row policies. Any reasonable judge or jury would then have to immediately dismiss the ACLU suit. There is simply no logical support for the idea that what would be clearly unlawful and unacceptable street behavior at 7th and Figueroa streets somehow becomes lawful and acceptable less than a half-mile east on the streets of skid row.

Certainly, we need to do as much as possible to help the homeless get off the streets and begin the process of rejoining society. The police chief’s policies do not prohibit this. In fact, his policies could serve as a necessary starting point. Allowing skid row to exist in its present form in perpetuity, though, is not the answer.

Peter H. Crossin

Los Angeles