Central City East : Downtown Los Angeles

Is the Safer Cities Initiative Working?

Yes, it is working. I have lived here almost 9 years , contrary to Luke Ford's assertion that I have only been here for 5.

The thoughts that were presented at the forum, sponsored by the Manhatten Institute were right on target. Here was an opportunity to be able to speak about the lawlessness that pervades skid row without interruption or intimidation by those who hold that this neighborhood in skid row is under siege by developers.

The issue was the Broken Windows theory ,and there were pro and con arguments about the issue of the Safer Cities Initiative.

Gary Blasi sent a letter that he would not be attending based on an issue of how there were only white panelists and not African American Panelists , yet, after I read the first reason for him not attending , which was that people couldn't access computers in skid row to rsvp online, I pretty much stopped reading the letter because this is one of the main reasons skid row is the way it is. Somehow we are all computer illiterate. Gary Blasi's letter just a furthering of the stereotype that people living in skid row are just a bunch of illiterate ignorant people.I was able to RSVP online. Many people here could have RSVPed online even at the offices of LA CAN on main street, they provide computers in their computer cafe.

The forum was an outcome of the article that Heather Macdonald wrote in City Journal praising the efforts of the LAPD and officers such as Commander Andy Smith in their efforts to bring law and order to the streets of skid row.


William Bratton was the keynote speaker at the end of the forum . He talked about medicine and how like a surgeon one must remove the cancer and then after the harsh medicines like chemo treatments then it is time to apply the medicine that is not as harsh , citing the project 50 that will be rolled out as that type of medicine.
This forum was the first time that the horrible conditions of what skid row was were presented after the Safer Cities initiative was implemented. There were so many memories coming to my mind of what skid row was like that it was very emotional for me as I remembered lot's of lives that were lost and people who are now disabled with Brain damage because of the way things used to be, with drug dealers sitting next to programs and drug dealers owning whole blocks of sidewalk and fronts of buildings. How can someone in their right mind not see that the issue in skid row had more to do with lawlessness than it had to do with the over concentration of services and lack of housing? Now that we are seeing the order brought here and the people who usually came here to party gone , now it becomes an issue of getting people into housing and services. Heather Macdonald brought it up at the end, and she was sort of shouted down. Someone on the second panel calling her remark a straw man.The issue is always clouded by the housing issue. When people begin to speak of the lack of order in skid row, somehow homelessness gets thrust into the conversation to confuse the issue and the conversation of criminalizing the homeless then becomes an issue . You can have order and people living on the streets. I believe this. But everyone gets off topic because the issue of concentration of homeless people seems to hide the forest for the trees. People somehow automatically equate crime with a person sleeping on the street.

There are two reason's skid row is the way it is. We have to face facts . The Mission's aren't going anywhere anytime soon. .

1. Lack of law enforcement in the past

2. Lack of full services for the housing that already exists here.

One interesting observation by Ed Fuentes over at View from a loft is so telling on the lack of knowledge many of the people had over the issue of skid row:

As usual, New York is considered a template on how to turnaround Los Angeles by some of the New York based panelists. Gretchen Dykstra, Former President of the Times Square Business Improvement District, regards a true solution to rebuild any urban social infrastructure is to respect a district’s history.

Many fail to know that Skid Row only previous history was agriculture before becoming fields of railroad tracks importing and exporting goods, that in part created a transient culture.

In other words, the area known as Downtown L.A’ Skid Row has very little 20th Century history other than being Downtown L.A.’s Skid Row.