Editorial: Homeless People Are Constantly Dumped – Burbank Police Just Got Arrested

Do cops leave people lying on the sidewalk?

That’s the question a staffer for Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian heard from a security guard who entered the North Hollywood district office Thursday.

The reason for this question quickly became clear. The guard had security camera video of a Burbank Police Department vehicle stopping in front of Krekorian’s office on Lankershim Boulevard earlier that morning. In the footage, officers can be seen getting out and opening a passenger side door for a barefoot man, dressed in a baggy shirt and pants, who gets out. Before the police car drives away, the man rubs his face, gets on his knees and places his head on the sidewalk. Then he lies face down on the sidewalk.

So the answer is, appallingly, yes: Some cops leave people – in this case, a homeless man – lying on the sidewalk and drive away.

This kind of action – or inaction – is despicable. But it’s not uncommon. Anecdotes abound about neighboring cities dumping homeless people in Los Angeles — as Krekorian noted in a letter he wrote to Burbank Mayor Nick Schultz, calling it “inhumane and inexcusable for a neighboring jurisdiction to simply take unhoused people off their streets and throw them onto ours.” .” Krekorian has asked the Los Angeles city attorney, Los Angeles County attorney and state attorney general to investigate.

Over the years, hospitals have been fined for abandoning homeless patients after discharge.

The Burbank Police Department also said it had opened an investigation, although it also released an apparent justification for the incident. The department says two officers responded to a call about the naked man at a bus stop near Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.

They persuaded him to put on his clothes and offered to drop him off somewhere. He asked to be taken to the Sunland/Tujunga area, but, according to the police department’s statement, “ultimately agreed to be transported on the Metro Red Line to North Hollywood.” Police stopped a few blocks from the station when the man asked to go out for coffee.

The Burbank Police Department would not say whether it has a protocol for calls involving homeless people in distress. But the Los Angeles Police Department does, according to Captain Kelly Muniz. LAPD officers and dispatchers evaluate these situations on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes a SMART team – made up of a police officer and a mental health clinician – will be dispatched. Other times, an unarmed team of mental health professionals part of the CIRCLE program, which operates out of the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety, is called.

Krekorian staff said they searched for the man and found him nearby in the afternoon. He told them he went to Providence St. Joseph for a leg injury but was kicked out because he was undisciplined. He had no money or wallet. Krekorian’s staff called the Los Angeles Fire Department and he was taken to Providence St. Joseph. Since then, a Krekorian spokesperson said, staff have tried to track him.

Citing federal health care privacy laws, Providence spokeswoman Patricia Aidem would not say whether the man had ever been to the hospital. However, she said, “we are not asking patients to leave the hospital.” She noted that every emergency department in Providence Southern California has a staff member responsible for helping homeless patients connect to local resources and providing them with clean clothes and shoes.

All we know for sure about this man is that he was unloaded on a sidewalk by Burbank police officers.

But the real scandal is that, although this case caught our attention because it occurred in front of the city council president’s district office, every homeless person languishing on a sidewalk, curb or curb park has been abandoned in one way or another – even if only by a policeman or policeman. a hospital, then by a system so flawed that housing is out of reach and social services are insufficient.

Being homeless in Los Angeles means constantly moving from one place to another – by a police officer or because of one of the many “anti-camping” signs posted around the city’s parks, schools and underpasses. .

It may have been unlucky for the Burbank Police that this man was dropped off in front of the Krekorian District office, but it may have been the best luck this man could have had. A team of city officials immediately began helping him, which started a discussion about the lack of resources available for the homeless.

If the police had let him go somewhere else, maybe no one would have noticed – just like they don’t notice the thousands of people who live on the streets right in front of them every day.