Skid Row, which in effect is an 
“open asylum” and a “containment zone” (somehow both of those seemingly contradictory terms apply) is a fifty square block section by the Los Angeles downtown. The neighborhood has been going through cycles of people who live on the streets there, beginning with the tent city that rose up there since it was the end of the railroad (which at the time, were mostly white). Now, the neighborhood is transitioning from a predominantly African American population to one that is more Latino, as white people move back through gentrification. On any given night, there are 4 to 6 thousand homeless people on Skid Row. It’s called “the hard school of knocks.”
“We live there because that is what we know”, we were told. “Skid row is my home. I have no bills and no responsibilities.” Skid row is a community, and has services nearby. “We live here because that is what we can afford. I could ill a man and have a bed for the rest of my life, but who wants to do that? No, I’ll stay here.”
Skid row’s porta-potties were removed, because if crime and prostitution; they have barely any trashcans,o it’s not surprise the streets are dirty. The streets are swept every once in a while, when the city has to look presentable for a big event, – and the people are swept right up along with the trash – and thrown into jail for tiny misdemeanors, like jaywalking, or for having the ash from your cigarette fall to the ground.
In the first month that the Safer Cities initiative was passed, there were 750 arrests (IN ONE MONTH) in a fifteen square block area. The initiative was based on a policy that aimed to address petty crime, which hypothetically would in turn address bigger crime – sort of like “trickle up” crime. Police cars patrolled those fifteen square blocks like sharks.
We no longer have asylums for the mentally ill, we no longer hospitalize them, – instead, we criminalize them. Jails are now the largest mental ill institutions, and housing the mentally ill in jail is inhumane. Even if you do not have a condition as you go to jail, you are very likely to develop one while there. Crime there goes on reported, you can’t film it on your hone like you can outside of jail. Last year alone, LA County paid out $40 million in misconduct – and that is just for the cases that were reported and could be proven.
One of the problems addressed is the role of the police, and their relationship with the people they serve. Cops have a quote to fill, and so a
re drivig around thinking <<ticket, ticket, ticket>> when they should be thinking of ways to address the problem. There is a line between your relationship with law enforcement and your relationship with the community. Law enforcement should come from the community.
Skid Row is supposed to be dangerous and scary, but as we walked through it, I felt comfortable, more comfortable than in many of the clean offices we had been to granted, we were there during broad daylight). We crossed the street, and a man called out, “You want some street? I got street for sale.”
