Steve Lopez at Skid Row
Steve Lopez goes to Skid Row again today. Kevin Roderick explains:
Over the last three decades or so, countless Times writers (or so it has seemed) have found their reporting muse or their social conscience writing about Skid Row. In journalism parlance it’s an evergreen story: always available, with reliable underbelly-of-the-city color, human-interest angles and a cast of heroes that has stayed pretty stable through the years. It’s also highly accessible, starting up just a few blocks from the newsroom.
Steve Lopez, the Times’ Metro columnist, is the latest to become engrossed.
Lopez is really getting to know Skid Row. He even learned what a “strawberry” is!
I go to Skid Row periodically, generally to visit the scene of a crime that I will be prosecuting — generally a drug sales crime. I am always accompanied by someone with a gun. In my suit, with my large digital camera, I tend to stand out.
As I walk around and snap pictures, I hear people calling out warnings to everyone in the surrounding area: the police are here; stop your drug-taking and drug sales for a few moments. Some heed the advice, and some don’t.
I have stood on a street corner at 5th and Main with narcotics officers — me in my suit with my camera around my neck — and watched as people shoot up and sell drugs on the opposite corner. When the drugs become available, it’s like a feeding frenzy; 5-10 people come up within a minute and engage in quick hand-to-hand transactions lasting only seconds.
I don’t take pictures of the drug transactions I see — it wouldn’t show anything, and it wouldn’t be admissible in my trial anyway — but I do take pictures of the area where my crime occurred. As I take these pictures, one of the more civil liberties-minded among the crowd will typically object. There always seems to be one person assigned to come up, get in my face, ask me who I am and what I’m doing, and proclaim that I have no right to take their pictures without their permission. The fact that I wasn’t specifically taking their picture doesn’t seem to mollify them. (This is where my companion with a gun intercedes; the gun always remains holstered, of course, but it’s good to know that it’s there.)
Not everyone is in favor of the drugs and prostutition that are rampant there. Once a man came up to me and said: “Don’t just take pictures! Do something about it!” I was tempted to reply: “I’m trying” — but I didn’t want to make it 100% percent obvious that I was a prosecutor. I could have been a movie scout — or at least a defense attorney.
You really have to go there to see what it’s like. I wish that I could take every jury that hears one of my Skid Row cases out to the scene, to see exactly where it happened.
But if you’re unlikely to visit any time soon, I recommend reading Lopez’s piece. It gives you some idea of what’s going on out there. I guarantee you that his portrait is not exaggerated.
Other than the preposterous statement that 10,000 homelesss sleep every night on the streets of Skid Row – which besides being wrong, is also physically impossible – Steve Lopez is doing a brilliant job with this series.
As for Fifth and Main – two corners are now totally clean (my office is on-half block away) – with four art galleris and a fifth one about to open, plus a sixth about to start construction all though the DLANC initiated Gallery Row project.
Six business that sold drugs are now closed on Main and the rest that tolerate that behavior will shortly be history.
The last of the 24/7 police video cameras are being installed along Main and Spring and Broadway – and as soon as the two hubs are finished, the cameras will be turned and 5th and Main will become drug dealer free.
A seperate project is also now working on getting the ‘Nickel’ – 5th Street – lined with cameras clear down to San Pedro. Soon this will be a much safer neighborhood for the homelesss, the residents of the SRO’s,and the people enrolled in the treatment programs
Brady Westwater (72f6df) — 10/18/2005 @ 10:46 amIf only you could bring juries down here.
I agree that, thus far, Steve Lopez is capturing the real scene. Especially yesterday’s piece that dealt with the criminal/drug aspects. I am the executive director of the Central City East Assn., which manages the two business improvement districts on downtown’s eastern industrial flank. This is where the greater LA area allows a public health emergency to exist, where drug deals outnumber the resources of law enforcement, and where human beings are allowed to die a gruesome death on the sidewalk. I never thought the actions of two sheriffs deputies leaving a released inmate on a city sidewalk would be a good thing, but it has unleashed a torrent of attention on this area. So be it. Let’s hope it brings with it the political will to change the way we are all “dumping” our social problems here.
Estela Lopez (ee9fe2) — 10/18/2005 @ 1:42 pmThe best part of the first Lopez article was the information on the many uses of a porta potty. It’s nice that the general public will get to see and contemplate all that they’ve been missing as they step into their next Andy Gump.
Oh, and that aroma too.
MOG (e715aa) — 10/18/2005 @ 1:44 pmUnless I am mistaken, this is the same Steve Lopez who once worked in Philly and wrote a book called Third and Indiana, which is a corner about two blocks from where I worked for 6 years. I did not read the book, but a friend who was the chaplain at a hospital about 4 blocks away from said corner told me it was very authentic, except too optimistic.
I understand completely the desire to take a jury on a field trip. I have told before where I was on a jury for an open and shut undercover drug bust at a similar corner, and the defense attorney had the ______* to claim it was a police set up, because “nobody would sell drugs in the open on the street”. Initially a majority of the jury agreed, although they should have known better- actually they were venting their bias against the police, which they weren’t supposed to have.**
*(I’m not sure what word to use; nerve, chutzpah, gall, etc., are far too mild. It is lawyers like that one that give the profession a bad name. I wanted to stand up and tell the judge that the lawyer was lying, but I didn’t think that would go over very well.)
**Has anyone ever written a booklet for jurors to let them know what to do, what their responsibilities and rights are? I assume for example, that if the jury for a major crime is hung and one juror has said during the deliberations, “I don’t trust what any cop says”, it would be appropriate for the judge to be made aware of such a fact. How would one do that???
MD in Philly (798da1) — 10/18/2005 @ 3:49 pmAn additional comment. One needs to remember that if one of those homeless people was my alcoholic and schizophrenic sister, unless she was judged to be in danger from imminently/immediately hurting herself or others, it would be very hard to do anything for her unless she wanted to cooperate. And even in those situations, there is very little that could be done to keep her from going right back whenever she wanted. This is one legacy of those who think the right of the individual to do as they “DWP” is the ultimate of virtue.
MD in Philly (798da1) — 10/18/2005 @ 3:56 pmYou’re so right MD in Philly. There are a lot of homeless people as a direct result of deinstitutionalization.
Tillman (1cf529) — 10/18/2005 @ 4:03 pmp.s., Actually, I agree that there are homeless people as a result of mental illness (and that of course leads to crime). However, I disagree with your last sentence in #5. Deinstitutionalization started happening because people didn’t want to pay for it. It was just another “social program.” Well, it was an important social program.
Yeah, let’s release all these people and then complain about crime! How smart is that?
Tillman (1cf529) — 10/18/2005 @ 4:13 pmTillman,
You make a good point. (I can’t dialogue on this too much, my time quota for blogging has now been used up for the week).
It happened before my time, but I think that some combination of the development of drugs to trt mental disorders, the cost of keeping people in mental hospitals, bad press about institutions such as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, and legal procedure “protecting people’s rights (to the extreme) all converged.
MD in Philly (798da1) — 10/18/2005 @ 4:37 pmNo, Deinstitutionalization occurred because the ACLU (the Evangelical Left) filed lawsuits against the state(s). Rather than fight another losing battle against the righteous, cities, states and the fed threw in the towel.
It’s easy to paint an accurate portrait of skid row. Just go and hang for a couple of days. You can’t mistake the scene for anything than what it is.
I used to hang out in a loft high above Fifth and Wall, the heart of the Nichol, back in the early eighties, and the only thing that has changed between then and now is the scale and intensity of the area. Why the change for the worse in a climate of improved standards of living? Because we’ve had 25 years of “progressive” government, layering program upon program to “help” the homeless. Most of these programs were cheer led by the LA Times and their chorus of poverty acolytes. Lopez blames homelessness on some nebulous “NIMBY” contingent of LA. He should take a good hard look in his sanctimonious mirror. Set-up a mission in his back yard and let him lay down for the cause. Pulitzer material at his doorstep.
Until LA washes away the stench of “progressives,” including the wingnuts at the Times, the homeless problem will only get worse. There’s still cache and a career to be made by being “progressive” in Los Angeles. Most American cities long ago got a handle on their homeless problems. But LA is led by the enlightened, and as such, we’re nowhere near bottom. Count on this same series to run in two years or so, albeit with another writer wringing the hands.
Reality Check (d11df8) — 10/18/2005 @ 9:57 pmOK R.C., MD in Philly’s statement was fair enough, so I didn’t argue with it.
But lack of federal funding is a factor in deinstitutionalization.
From http://www.psychlaws.org/HospitalClosure/Rheinstein.htm:
…if you are between the ages of 21 and 65, have a severe mental illness and require hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital, the federal Institutions for Mental Disease (IMD) Exclusion bars the use of Medicaid funds for your treatment.
…
The IMD exclusion precludes states from using those federal funds for most of the care provided in state psychiatric hospitals, making the IMD exclusion a gigantic economic carrot feeding the process of deinstitutionalization. States started locking the front door and opening the back, in an effort to get patients out of state funded hospitals and into settings where the federal government would help pay the tab. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for the most severely ill to get inpatient treatment. Hospitals are discharging patients sicker and quicker in a mad long dash to make them Medicaid eligible by ending their inpatient residency. The primary question that drives the system today is not “what does the patient need?” but rather “what will federal programs pay for?”
The consequences of Medicaid’s discriminatory nature are staggering for the severely mentally ill, their families and the communities in which they live. The United States has lost effectively 93% of its state psychiatric hospital beds since deinstitutionalization began in 19553, resulting in increased rates of incarceration, homelessness, victimization and violence.4 The race for Medicaid dollars has, in fact, reduced the total number of state psychiatric hospital patients to less than 60,000 today, compared to 500,000 in 1965 when Medicaid was enacted.
For many people with severe mental illness, deinstitutionalization has meant nothing more than transinstitutionalization from a hospital ward to a prison cell. A grim reality indeed.
Anyway, since releasing mentally ill patients started in 1955, it isn’t only because of 1960’s liberalism. Bottom line: it looks like it had bipartisan support, but for different reasons.
Tillman (1cf529) — 10/19/2005 @ 8:16 amI have to disagree with Brady Weatwater on something he mentioned this time. I live in the Heart of Central City East- this is not skid row, skid row is a state of mind. I agree that there are not 10,00 homeless people sleeping on top of each other day and night in the Central City East Are of Downtown Los angeles, but I disagree that you hahve blatently said that there will be cameras for the residents in the heart of the row where I live after the cameras on main are set up. WE are seeing an influx and will see an influx in violent crime against those of us who reside in the private not for proft hotels here as well as those who sleep on the street as you push the drug deales into sucha samll area
I was at a meeting and am part of a group of people who meet with the police every month and we were informed that on the nickel between wall street and SAn PEdro there will be no cameras.
The Business communuity and especially Brady Westwater has pushed the horribleness of skid row into an seven smaller containment area and althugh there may not be 10,000 sleeping in the streets every night , it will feel like this as the cameras do thier jobs and the LAPD cover those art galleries on 5th and Main and we , the poor of what you guys call skid row become preyed upon day and night.
AS far as the mental insitutions are concerned , if it wasn’t for unscrupulous children going to court and getting their elderly parents committed so as to claim they were mentallly incompetant so as to to steal their money , we wouldn’t be in this situation. BE very carful for what you ask for.
NOw a days the courts see the dfference between mental incompetance and mental illness as many of our judges and lawyers may suffer with mental illness , but aren’t incompetent and function.
WHat the problem is now is that we need to come up with a new way of institutionailizing folks and not taking their checks away from them, it is freedom people want. They want to go to mcdonalds now and then , they want to go to the movies , the malls .
On site residential housing for teh mentally ill without taking their money from them would do the trick, not might do the trick , will do the trick.
ANd beleive it or not the not-for profit hotel owners have changed what happens here. Here I am in my room , with my own bathroom , writing on a computer with DSL to let the folks know I agree with them or disagree. ISn’t progress amazing .
Has anyone come to us to ask us what we think th solutions are for us. You’d be surprised. I know skid row as it is is not the answer.
You go Estela Lopez. You Go girl.
I have written open letters to Steve Lopez on my blog after each part in his series. WIll they be read?
Don Garza (9bfede) — 10/19/2005 @ 3:51 pmWas there a typo in there?????
MD in Philly (b3202e) — 10/19/2005 @ 7:10 pm