The stakes – literally life and death – are too high. Joseph believes it’s time to stop playing politics with Skid Row. Little happened then, and even as 2015 begins, the deadline has been officially pushed back to 2016. These are the same words Joseph heard from their predecessors a decade ago. But there are calls from Mayor Eric Garcetti and other leaders to end homelessness, especially on Skid Row, by 2015. What Skid Row needs, they say, is affordable housing – and lots of it.Īs much as they’d like to, city leaders can’t undo a century of bad urban policy overnight. But Joseph and others say Skid Row doesn’t need any more handouts. The next few years could bring big changes. And solving homelessness becomes a priority. What happens when 50,000 people move next door to Skid Row? But after two decades of downtown development, there are finally neighbors to bear witness. Not long ago, Skid Row was easy to ignore, a pocket of misery on the outskirts of a crumbling city shell nobody visited. Officer Deon Joseph nudged the woman on the left to make sure she was alive. With nowhere else to go, many head to Skid Row, he says. He’s seeing a lot of new faces lately as it gets harder legally to commit somebody to mental health facilities, while the prisons and jails are letting inmates out early to ease overcrowding.
In this neighborhood, 2,000 people sleep on the streets at night, by Joseph’s estimate. “I feel respect when they call me by my first name,” he explains, “and I show them respect by calling them sir or ma’am.” When homeless addicts call him by his first name, Officer Joseph doesn’t feel dissed. Too Many,” he is a walking, talking public service announcement for the upside of community-based policing. In the one-square mile marked by a mural that announces “Skid Row, pop. Joseph has never fired his gun and hopes he never has to. Everybody’s talking about white cops shooting black kids hundreds show up in small towns and big cities for “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protests. These are tense times for police and the policed. He says he wouldn’t dream of working anywhere else. He is a man of deep, abiding Christian faith, and he considers Skid Row his mission in life. He is not jaded or cynical, and he doesn’t view the world as LAPD blue against everybody else. But should the situation call for it, he can turn fierce and scary-looking in a heartbeat. He sports a shiny bald pate and kind, expressive eyes. Nearly two decades on some of the nation’s poorest, nastiest streets haven’t stripped this beat cop of his humanity. Some say he’s their angel watching over them. And then he returns the calls.Īnd so, he knows nearly everybody – The Hurricane, Bow Leg, Slow Bucket, Thick ‘n’ Juicy – and they know him, too. He gives out his email address and cell phone number. He leads self-defense classes for homeless women, events he calls “Ladies’ Night.” He tweets crime prevention tips and offers up anecdotes on Facebook. He used to make a lot of arrests, but these days he spends most of his time just talking to people and handing out donated hygiene kits – toothpaste, soap, deodorant, lotion and shaving cream – and fliers that explain how to apply for housing vouchers. Despite the open drug dealing, piles of trash and omnipresent aroma of urine, feces and burning crack and weed, he has found a community here. He prefers foot patrol it is more intimate. Joseph is senior lead officer for the Los Angeles Police Department, and Skid Row has been his beat for the past 17 years. It’s just another day in the life of a man shopkeepers and residents of the nation’s last true Skid Row call the “Sheriff of Skidberry.” “Have a good day, ma’am,” he replies, moving on down the line of dazed people and overstuffed shopping carts outside the Union Rescue Mission.
He wants to make contact, ensure that she is still breathing.
This muscular black man with arms thick as hams leans over and gently shakes the woman’s bony shoulder. Somebody else might walk by without looking at the painfully thin crackhead curled on the sidewalk in the fetal position.
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