LA TImes: LAPD presence in skid row begins paying off
Areas have been swept clean of homeless encampments and crime is down 35% this month. Still, some ask if the commitment will be long term.
By Richard Winton, Times Staff Writer
January 27, 2007
Just a few months ago, the southeast corner of 6th and San Pedro streets was a drug bazaar nestled amid cardboard boxes, tarps and tents.
It was a place where men and women in bedraggled clothes with leathery skin and uncombed hair hung out as a woman in a wheelchair slyly sold heroin to passing motorists.
Midnight Mission official Orlando Ward said he could look through his office window and see the decaying cardboard encampments stretching for three-quarters of a block, with some of their dwellers shooting up drugs in broad daylight with few consequences.
Today, all the camps on the block are gone, along with much of the drug dealing and violence that came with them.
Usually, Ward said, people slowly return after an area is cleared out.
But not this time. At least not yet.
Read the full article over here,
By Richard Winton, Times Staff Writer
January 27, 2007
Just a few months ago, the southeast corner of 6th and San Pedro streets was a drug bazaar nestled amid cardboard boxes, tarps and tents.
It was a place where men and women in bedraggled clothes with leathery skin and uncombed hair hung out as a woman in a wheelchair slyly sold heroin to passing motorists.
Midnight Mission official Orlando Ward said he could look through his office window and see the decaying cardboard encampments stretching for three-quarters of a block, with some of their dwellers shooting up drugs in broad daylight with few consequences.
Today, all the camps on the block are gone, along with much of the drug dealing and violence that came with them.
Usually, Ward said, people slowly return after an area is cleared out.
But not this time. At least not yet.
Read the full article over here,
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