Skid Row Police Campaign Debuts

Outside the Union Rescue Mission on Sunday on San Julian Street, Debbie Dues surveyed the uniformed police officers, on foot and riding bicycles, who were visible in three directions.

“Today at least there’s no drug-selling because there’s cops on every corner,” said Dues, a two-year skid row resident with no bottom teeth and a shiny gold scarf wrapped around her head.

But asked how long a drop in drug sales might last, Dues, 53, let out a belly laugh and yelled: “It ain’t even gonna last till tonight! You know that!”

For the 50 police officers who started patrolling the skid row area Sunday, public skepticism might be as big a challenge as the wrenching poverty, homelessness and rampant drug use that have come to define the district.

The officers are part of the much-talked-about Safer City Initiative launched on skid row Sunday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Police Chief William J. Bratton and City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo.

“We are not going to give up on skid row,” said Villaraigosa, flanked by rows of police officers. The mayor promised “an unprecedented partnership” among government, law enforcement and social service groups focusing on the downtown district bordered by 3rd and 7th streets and Main and Alameda streets.

The most immediate and visible face of the campaign will be the newly assigned police officers, who fanned out in pairs throughout the district for the first time Sunday.

“It’s Day One -- a lot of warnings and just introducing ourselves to the community,” said Officer Eric Garcia.

One block from the Central Division Station at the corner of 6th and Wall streets, Garcia and his partner Brian Frieson spotted a man and a woman they suspected were smoking drugs. Both were quickly splayed against the wall, and the man was handcuffed as four more police officers converged on the scene.

Garcia took down the woman’s name and personal information, his voice friendly and conversational.

“If you’re just sitting on the sidewalk, that’s fine. But you can’t be doing drugs,” he said as she nodded.

Eventually the officers concluded that no criminal activity could be proved. The cuffs came off the man, and Garcia handed the woman a card from the nearby Union Rescue Mission and sent her off with a, “Be safe, all right?”

Police commanders and prosecutors all promise an enlightened approach to skid row -- one that focuses on criminal activity.

All of the reassigned officers received 30 hours of specialized training for the skid row assignment, including how to deal with people suffering from mental disorders, said Capt. Andrew Smith of Central Division. The new additions will be a “tremendous boost” to the approximately 300 active field officers operating out of the station, Smith said. They will be deployed in shifts throughout the day, with an emphasis on early evening hours, when Smith said the crime rate is highest.

But some homeless activists have already decried the initiative as a crackdown on the city’s most powerless residents. Alice Callaghan of Las Familias del Pueblo, an advocacy group for the homeless, started hollering as she waved a sign during Villaraigosa’s news conference and was quickly escorted down the block by police.

“It’s about real estate. That’s all it is,” Callaghan said. “It’s about purifying the public sidewalks so the people moving into these lofts downtown won’t feel afraid.”

Caroline Phillips, a prosecutor with the city attorney’s office who will be specializing in skid row cases, acknowledged that the police will have to work to gain the trust of a wary population.

“They see the police as a paramilitary presence here to bust heads,” Phillips said.

Skid row residents complain of regular harassment and nuisance arrests from certain officers -- including repeated jaywalking tickets and random confiscation of shopping carts and belongings.

“Some cops are all right, but the majority of them just harass you,” said Thomas Jenkins, a 53-year-old former warehouse worker living across the street from the Midnight Mission. The money used to pay for the massive police deployment could be better used, Jenkins said, to “build another low-income shelter.”

The Safer City Initiative is one of Bratton’s signature urban reform tools, and he has already had success using it to reduce the crime rate in MacArthur Park, along Hollywood Boulevard and in Baldwin Village.

On skid row, the campaign calls for beefed-up law enforcement and greater follow-through by the city attorney’s office -- particularly for drug-related offenses.

Bratton and Villaraigosa also promised better street lighting and increased sidewalk cleaning, along with a campaign to create more affordable housing units and homeless shelter space.

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ashraf.khalil@latimes.com