Patrolling L.A.'s Skid Row

The downtown housing boom has helped finally turn more attention toward the problems of Skid Row -- but few of us really know what it's like down there, other than ocassionally driving or walking on nearby streets. Mack Reed at LAVoice wanted to learn more, and set up an LAPD ride-along with Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph. Mack's account of his time with Ofc. Joseph is a compelling read.

I'll resist the urge to repost it all, but a few highlights:

--The influx of new officers on the streets seems to be having a major, solid effect: "On virtually every block we cruise, it seems, young, new-looking officers are on patrol."

--The 9th Circuit ruling on the ACLU's challenge to the city's vagrancy law, on the other hand, has led to more violence on the street, the Officer says.

--Money that was supposed to pour in courtesy Prop. 63 - earmarked for California's mental health system -- hasn't made it to skid row, he says.

--According to Ofc. Joseph, Skid Row's ground zero appears to bethe Huntington Hotel. (Uh, no, not the Pasadena one.), where "pretty much everything goes on in there - gun sales, drug deals, prostitution, counterfeit money exchange, even rumors of kiddie prostitution."

In one of the most interesting tidbits, Mack reports that some of the new downtown loft dwellers themselves are a part of the problem. The new downtown residents have given drug dealers a solid new clientel:

"The dealers figure, 'We charge a crackhead $5 for a rock, we can charge them 10.' 'Lofties, they call 'em.'"

Not long ago, he saw a little Asian guy come out of a loft and start shoving around a huge 250-pound black parolee - a violent repeat offender known as "Knockout" - because the man had supposedly shortchanged him on a drug deal.

"Anyone else, he wouldn't have let 'em push him around," he said. "But he let this guy push him around because the lofties pay them good money."

Go -- read it all.