In Defense Of Resolving Homelessness Through Police Action

The Wall Street Journal has published a commentary today that supports the LAPD Safer Cities Initiative. It is written by Heather MacDonald, from the Manhattan Institute, who has published a study on this. Here is the start of the commentary:

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.

Before Mr. Smith's policing initiative began in September 2006, Skid Row's 50 blocks had reached a level of squalor that stunned even long-time observers. Encampments composed of tents and cardboard boxes covered practically every inch of sidewalk. Their 1,500 or so occupants, stretched out in lawn chairs or sprawled on the pavement, injected heroin and smoked crack and marijuana in plain view. Feces and urine coated the ground. Crime was pervasive. The biggest heroin gang in downtown Los Angeles operated from the area's west end, using illegal aliens to peddle dope supplied by the Mexican Mafia. Young Bloods and Crips from Watts's housing projects battled over drug turf and amused themselves by robbing the elderly. Merchants brave enough to operate in the area had to barricade their property against nightly invasion and navigate through excrement and drug paraphernalia to open business in the mornings.

Click here for full article.


(Pic from viewfromaloft.typepad.com)