Skid Row Peril Makes It On CNN

If you missed last night’s airing, here is the transcript:

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Skid Row, a 50 square block human dumping ground in downtown Los Angeles.

CAPT. ANDREW SMITH, LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPT.: Here, let me see your wrist band. Were you in the hospital recently?

KAYE: Still wearing a bracelet from the county jail, this woman Lilly was too strung out to tell how she got here.

SMITH: How long were you in the county jail? KAYE: Because of the abundant social services Skid Row is a magnet for the drug addicted, the mentally ill, the criminals, and the helpless. It's also a magnet for other cities who don't know what to do with their own problems, so they bring them here and dump them.

SMITH: I saw an outside agency dropping off an individual who didn't live in this area who had never been here before and hadn't been arrested in this area down -- actually right down on that corner down there.

KAYE: Two months ago, out on patrol, LAPD Captain Andrew Smith says he saw two L.A. County sheriff's deputies dump this man, Byron Harris, who Smith described as confused.

SMITH: Watched them pull to the curb, open the door and take a handcuffed prison other out, unhandcuff him, hand him a bag of his property and begin to leave, so I of course stopped them and tried to figure out what was going on.

KAYE: Smith says that Harris told him that he had not requested to be dropped downtown. He had been arrested in Long Beach, 25 miles away. But a spokesman for the sheriff told CNN Harris, just released from jail, had requested food and shelter, both available on Skid Row. The deputies did not dump that man or anyone else.

(on camera): Why do you think, if it's indeed happening, other communities are doing this?

SMITH: Well, we have a lot of services, social services, down here. But really, I think it's a way for other cities to get rid of the problems that they have.

KAYE (voice-over): Skid Row services include food, shelter, medicine, even prenatal care. It's a unique setup born from good intentions, but critics like Central City East's executive director, Estella Lopez, now worry the free handouts are leading to dumping.

(on camera): A long time ago they thought that this idea of centralized services was a good thing. Has it turned out to be a good thing?

ESTELLA LOPEZ, CENTRAL CITY EAST: It's turned out to be a nightmare. What it has done -- it's been a good thing for the 88 other cities and the counties of Los Angeles that don't have to deal with problems that come from their own communities. They send them here.

KAYE (voice-over): Which of these people have been dumped or decided to come on their own is unclear. But Estella Lopez and Captain Smith aren't the only ones who have witnessed dumping.

ORLANDO WARD, MIDNIGHT MISSION: How long have you been on the street?

KAYE: Orlando Ward works at Midnight Mission, just a block from where Captain Smith encountered Byron Harris. WARD: I had a guy in our courtyard three days ago, he had a hospital gown on, he had -- the IV was still attached. So, I went and asked him, I said, "How did you get down here?" and he said that the ambulance dropped him off a couple blocks down in front of a mission. I said, "Well, did you go in?" He goes, "Well, they just dropped me off."

KAYE: Ward was once a basketball star at Stanford University. Drugs lured him to the streets of Skid Row. He bottomed out and after two years he got clean. Ward says Skid Row was designed to help people, not dump people.

WARD: It makes me angry when you dump people without attaching them to the services that they really need. If your motive is getting them out of your backyard and dumping them on to somebody else, I have a problem with that.

KAYE: Captain Smith's 145 officers can hardly make headway here. San Julian Street, otherwise known as Heroin Alley, is like a giant block party where everyone brings an illegal drug. This woman propositioned me. Police say it's well known she's a prostitute.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How much can I get paid for this?

KAYE: She explains she's been on the street since age nine. Why do you live like this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because this is a million dollar corporation, it never going to stop.

KAYE: This is Skid Row.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Skid Row looks out for Skid Row.

SMITH: How are you doing? How you hanging?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm doing OK.

SMITH: Are you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah. I'm hanging on.

KAYE: Captain Smith says police won't stop the problem, so who will? And when, the captain wonders, will other communities start providing services for their needy?

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA, L.A. MAYOR: A great city can't be a place where we're leaving so many people behind.

KAYE: Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is investigating. He says the city of Los Angeles has pledged millions to help the chronically homeless, but it's time the federal government step up, too.

VILLARAIGOSA: The only governmental entity with the resources to deal with the structural problems of poverty in the cities is the federal government. The federal government has failed and refused over the last few years to invest in housing, to invest in the urban core in our cities.

KAYE: The same society that's allowing people to live on Skid Row is in some cases transporting them to be forgotten and perhaps to die.

WARD: It's a cultural genocide, we're losing a whole generation or people to this despair and ultimately death.

KAYE: Unlike Byron Harris, countless others may have been dumped here without a witness.

Randi Kaye, CNN, on Skid Row in Los Angeles.