The Truth on Skid Row

A few weeks ago, a homeless man was shot and killed by the LAPD on Skid Row. Within a day, the entire nation knew about it because of a video that had been posted on Facebook. It sparked enormous controversy. Some people instantly protested, ‘Police brutality.’ Another police shooting of what appeared to be an innocent population was all too familiar. The question was posed: How could the police shoot and kill such a helpless man in the lowest of economic classes in America?

Then the LAPD essentially said, “Well wait, the homeless man was not being compliant with the officers and during a physical altercation, he attempted to take one of the officer’s guns”… which then put their lives in danger. We know from what happened in Ferguson, an officer will not be reprimanded by the justice system for using deadly force if he felt his life was threatened.

People then said that the man was obviously mentally ill and officers have no right to just shoot people because they are acting abnormally. Did the officers really feel like their life was threatened by a homeless man struggling with mental illness?

After a few days, more information was obtained on the man who was killed. He had stolen a french man’s identity, had served time in prison for attempting to rob a bank, and while in prison he had been assessed by doctors to have a mental illness. When his sentence was over, the government tried to send him back to “his country”, but France would not comply. They had no other choice but to let him out on the streets—which is a scary thought if you look at the bigger picture.

Looking into this story, I walked the streets of Skid Row--as shocking as that may sound to the average. I spoke to members of the community, and while it was agonizing to breath the many scents of the street, I got to know a few of the homeless people.

Many are severely mentally ill, like blatantly severely mentally ill—walking and running the streets, dancing on sticks like strippers, stumbling into walls, and much more. I saw people injecting themselves with drugs and others rolling blunts. However, not one once of me was frightened. There were certain areas that were friendlier than others. I walked by one area with my camera and a man told me that I had to leave because I wasn’t authorized to be there…whatever that meant. For the most part, residents on Skid Row said they liked their lives and their friends there. It was a community.

Herb Smith, the president of the nonprofit Los Angeles Mission works with this very community every day. He says that he’s seen an increase in the mentally ill on the streets of Skid Row and he thinks there’s been another dumping of patients from mental health institutions.

The issue of mental illness on Skid Row wasn’t a question to me, it was evident. I  wanted to know why so many homeless people on Skid Row didn’t like the police presence there. Where was the LAPD doing to best handle this mentally ill population? There had to be another side to this Skid Row story.

LAPD Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph has been working the Skid Row streets for 17 years. I took a walk with him and two of his officers on their daily patrols and to say in the least, I found the other side. I found way more issues present than met the eye.

While many of the residents greeted Joseph and the officers as friends, many calling Joseph “Uncle”, Joseph said he knows many of them so well because he has arrested them at some point in the past.

Joseph said that the people who are on the streets aren’t normally those that are homeless. The homeless people are in the surrounding housing facilities and missions, trying to get off the street. Those that are on the street are either selling drugs or using drugs, many of which don’t live there, but come because they know that’s where they will make money off their products.

Joseph said that he knows there are mental health institutions from Vegas and other places that are dropping their patients off. He knows nearly every face within that 50-block radius they call Skid Row and when a cluster of new people show up in hospital socks with wristbands and such, he knows where they came from.

Joseph says that the drugs on the street is what is heightening this populations mental illnesses and causes many of them to act out. The clinicians from the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health that work with the LAPD on the streets can’t even talk these people down because the drugs have them on a whole other level, Joseph says.

Joseph told me to turn off my camera and he walked me through a small park. The park reminded me of my family reunions. There were grandmas and grandpas, dogs and kids. There was music playing, they were eating and playing boardgames as if it were a picnic. When we got a distance away from the park, Joseph told me why, in the middle of Skid Row, there was a park where not one person seemed homeless. It was run by a gang, the old ladies were the leaders, and all they did was sit there and play games and eat until their money came back to them from their drug runners. He told me a story of a homeless man that had walked into the park to collect some cans, who was later found beaten so bad he nearly lost his eyes. No one was allowed in that park that was not working for the gang. Remember earlier when I mentioned the man who told me I wasn’t authorized to be there? I was standing right outside that park gate when he said that.

Joseph told me other stories of violence on the streets. He told me that the streets were run by bloods and crips and laws don’t permit the LAPD to do much about it. He said that advocacy groups argue for the rights of the homeless on Skid Row to have porter potties and other facilities, but all that means is more hubs for the gangs to run and sell their drugs. He said the gangs are even making it nearly impossible for those living in the housing there to get off the streets. The housing often includes sober living programs, but the gangs go door to door trying to sell their new product and those that refuse, trying to get sober, are then beat up right there or found and brutally beat later somewhere nearby.

After walking the streets with the LAPD officers, I felt so naïve for previously walking the streets and talking to people. Joseph assured me that the people there will know who you and if you’ve ever even done a single hit of a drug in your life just by looking into your eyes. He said they leave me alone because they know I’m not a customer. Then he goes on to mention another issue of racial profiling, that he himself said he had been a victim of while growing up. He said they wouldn’t mess with me because I had the typical white girl look that society cares about. He said they see me and they know that if they harm me, society will care and they will get in trouble, but if they harm an average black person, society will likely not value that life and there will be little to no consequences.

Joseph says that society is truly falling short in attending to many of the issues on Skid Row, including the mentally ill with taking them out of facilities and putting them on the streets, the gangs with the laws that don’t allow officers to remove any person’s belongings such as a couch, the helpless homeless people with the laws that the use of some drugs misdemeanors—and not even making some of the awful drugs on the streets illegal. Officers on Skid Row don’t just play the role of a police officer, they are also forced to be mental health clinicians, drug specialists, safety enforcers, regulators, friends… it’s a job many wouldn’t want, but officers down there, like Joseph, are invested in the people and feel a divine calling to do what they can to help those who are struggling on the streets of Skid Row.

To view my official report on this subject you can visit: Annenberg TV News