“Safer Streets” & Homelessness on Skid Row
In Los Angeles, the ACLU and other homeless advocates and activists are clashing with the City Council over what to do about the chaos, violence and homelessness on Skid Row. An article from the Wall Street Journal offers a defense of L.A.’s enforcement-based “Safer Streets Initiative,” which draws on “broken windows theory:”
“Drive around Los Angeles’s Skid Row with Police Commander Andrew Smith and you can barely go a block without someone’s congratulating him on his recent promotion. Such enthusiasm is certainly in order. Over the last year, this tall, high-spirited policeman and his officers have achieved what seemed impossible: a radical reduction of Skid Row’s anarchy.
What is surprising about Mr. Smith’s popularity, however, is that his fans are street-wizened drug addicts, alcoholics and mentally ill vagrants. In that fact lies a resounding refutation of the untruths that the American Civil Liberties Union and the rest of the homelessness industry have used to keep Skid Row in chaos — until now…”
>> You can read the whole article online at the Wall Street Journal (behind the pay wall) or here (in its entirety, for free.)
There are always at least two sides to every story and I’ve read other perspectives on this one. The ACLU and others agree that something must be done about crime and disorder on Skid Row, but they also say that the county provides beds for less than half of the 88,000 homeless men, women and children in Los Angeles County — 10,000 just in the downtown area. And that L.A.’s homeless folks need affordable housing, mental health and medical care and job training.
Using enforcement will “clean up the streets.” It will not end homelessness. And it puts cops in the middle. (As always, it seems.)
Via: LA’s Homeless Blog
Police without adequate social programs are blind. Social programs without police are lame.
It’s time this country learned we are woefully short on both police and social programs.
Amen, amen, amen, Billy.
Fortunately in Greensboro, we have cops that work with existing social programs to help the homeless. I am especially impressed with how our downtown cops have worked with NightWatch and the Housing Support Teams to assist the chronically homeless folks they see on a daily basis. They’d rather see people get better than just put them in jail all the time. We have good cops here. God bless ‘em. But GPD is understaffed and overworked and Greensboro needs more resources (affordable housing, mental health treatment and substance abuse treatment, medical care, jobs) to help the homeless.