Policing Skid Row: Is the Safer Cities Initiative the Right Approach?

By Eric Richardson
Published: Thursday, January 17, 2008, at 09:44AM

Eric Richardson [Flickr]

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The Manhattan Institute is holding a morning conference on policing Skid Row at the Marriott. I'm doing light updates over on blogdowntown's twitter. We'll have a real write up later in the day. Feel free to follow along or to wait for real text.

Update (11am): We're at the first break, following a session that included Commander Andy Smith and author Heather MacDonald, whose City Journal article on the Safer Cities Initiative sparked a lot of conversation in the fall (and was excerpted for the Wall Street Journal and L.A. Times. The two tended to have a common focus in their comments: Safer Cities is about restoring a sense of order to the community. Also on the panel, Mark Kleiman from UCLA and Carol Wilkins from the Corporation for Supportive Housing.

A full write-up was posted this evening.

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Comments

David Kennedy writes:

I look forward to detail about this event. Heather McDonald's article was both thorough in historic detail and thoughtful policy recommendation. The focus being on what works. After reading her article, for once I thought, "Hmm, the LAPD seems to be on the ball." As a taxpayer and a local resident, I wish I could think that a lot more.

For too long, ACLU ideology, the institutional self-interest of service-providers for the 'homeless', and a shared desire of citizens and civic leaders to warehouse the problem have trumped common sense in Skid Row. The consequences for the people living there have been horrendous. Downtown's development has been retarded for decades by the breakdown of law and order in Skid Row. Hopefully, some new more humane consensus can be reached so Skid Row is reformed. Clearly, the status quo is indefensible and morally bankrupt.

# on Jan.17.2008 AT 11:30 AM

Metro Local writes:

"Downtown's development has been retarded for decades by the breakdown of law and order in Skid Row."

I'm not certain I disagree with this statement, but one has to wonder if the current urban core reuse would be happening if Skid Row had not driven down the price of property to the point some investors were willing to buy, renovate and risk renting when everyone else seemed to be going the other direction.

I certainly agree with the statement moral bankruptcy by the region allowed Skid Row to build to what it had been in recent years. I do think we have turned a corner and hopefully gotten closer to an environment that address the social safety net needs of a reasonable diameter as other regional centers on the Westside, Hollywood and Valley reclaim the homeless they've pointed Downtown for decades.

# on Jan.19.2008 AT 02:32 PM

Eric Richardson writes:

Metro: I think that the downfall of property values in the Downtown core and the rise of Skid Row happened on different timelines. The Historic Core had its heart cut out by the loss of the financials, and that happened in the 1960s and early 1970s. Skid Row really didn't come into what it is today until the 1980s.

# on Jan.19.2008 AT 02:42 PM

Metro Local writes:

I understand your perspective Eric.

As I understood it, and defer to your study of local history, government tenants began moving in when the financials moved on and then the government tenants moving out as Skid Row moved in...it was only when bargain hunters willing to hold buildings for more than a decade did adaptive reuse begin, no?

# on Jan.19.2008 AT 03:39 PM