25 Held After Police Clear Encampment

Capping a two-week effort to demolish a homeless encampment near the Harbor Freeway, Los Angeles police arrested 25 people early Friday morning and knocked down more than a dozen makeshift tents along James M. Wood Boulevard.

The action, part of the LAPD’s effort to remove homeless encampments in parts of downtown, was criticized by homeless advocates but applauded by businesses leaders pushing to clean up the streets.

“This is something that has progressed over the last couple of months into a serious public safety issue,” said Rampart Division Capt. Charlie Beck.

Police officials said they had recently noticed an increase in prostitution, drug use and burglaries from vehicles as well as more citizen complaints. Beck said he also worried that cars coming off the freeway could jump the curb and hit homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk.

“I tried as best as I know how to get people into services,” Beck said. “We tried to alleviate the problem without making arrests, but if people won’t respond to our efforts to comply willingly to the law, then we enforce the law.”

On Dec. 29, police scattered about 100 residents camped out on a Golden Avenue cul-de-sac near the Dome Village homeless shelter. On Jan. 10, police visited a cluster of tents that had sprung up about a block from the old encampment and waited until residents packed up.

Officials at the Los Angeles Housing Authority said they had tried for months to get people living near the intersection of Golden Avenue and James M. Wood Boulevard into shelters or public programs. Few accepted.

On their last visit Wednesday, Housing Authority officials persuaded one man who had left a shelter to return, but everyone else turned down their services, said program manager Jeannette Rowe.

According to witnesses, a caravan of police cars drove in at about 5:30 a.m. while most of the homeless residents were sleeping.

“I was sitting on the curb and 10 police cars swooped up,” said a 43-year-old woman who declined to give her name because she feared police harassment. “They told people to get out of their tents and handcuffed them.

“They tore everything down,” she added, “and told people they were taking them all to jail for sleeping on the sidewalk, and me for sitting on the sidewalk.”

All of those at the encampment was taken into custody, she said.

Pulling a citation slip out of the pocket of her loose-fitting black jacket, the woman said she was the only one released from jail. A doctor authorized her release, she said, because she required medication for blood clots in her leg.

Bob Coffman was cleaning his motor home, parked a block west of the encampment, when he saw the police cars pass. “It looked like a parade,” he said.

Coffman, 50, said he and his wife, Maggie, had been visiting friends at the encampment the night before and cooked them soup on a propane stove.

The couple backed out of the street when police arrived, but had returned around noon to pick up friends’ belongings. They had planned to store the items at Dome Village until their friends returned.

“Look, there are already other homeless people scavenging,” Coffman said, pointing to a handful of men and women who were loading up a shopping cart. “They’re not from here. This always happens after a sweep.”

Homeless advocate Lisa McLaughlin Strassman was taking pictures and retrieving Bibles, purses, photographs and other items left behind by police.

“It’s a pitiful sight,” she said. “They’re cleansing the city, making it trendy and making it hip for the loft district. What happens to the homeless people on the streets? They’ve got to go somewhere.”

Strassman was working with Ted Hayes, who has been trying since last May to establish a legal homeless encampment outside Dome Village and on other vacant land around the city.

Hayes condemned city officials for selective enforcement of the law.

“Homelessness is going on all over L.A., but this is a high-visibility area,” he said.

A sweep here might look good, he said, but it won’t solve the root problems of scarce affordable housing, health insurance and jobs.

“Someone might take assistance but in two to three days, they’re back on the street,” Hayes said. “They’re either in someone else’s neighborhood or back at the same site they were evicted from.”

Some cheered the latest action, however.

Few would tolerate homeless encampments in Westwood or Brentwood, said Carol Schatz, who heads a downtown business group. “So why is it tolerated downtown?” she challenged.

“It is absolutely inappropriate for people in a civil society to be living on the street,” said Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central City Assn. “And it really violates everyone’s right, including those of the people living on the street, to be living in their own waste in very unsanitary conditions.

“Public right of ways are for everyone, so it is, in our view, appropriate for the police to be making the sidewalks safe,” she said.