Top Los Angeles Police Department officials are divided over two proposals for cleaning up skid row -- one an ambitious and controversial effort to move thousands of homeless people off the streets, the other focused primarily on reducing crime.
The debate comes as the city struggles to develop a comprehensive strategy for solving the downtown district's many long-entrenched problems.
Despite the intense focus on skid row in recent months, progress so far has been hard to measure.
Last week, the LAPD declared one of skid row's most notorious sections -- the 600 block of San Julian Street -- a "drug-free zone" after a series of altercations between homeless people and officers.
With increased patrols, San Julian's large homeless population scattered, and for the first time in years the street looks largely like a ghost town. But officials acknowledge that it was far from a long-term solution, noting that most of the transients simply relocated elsewhere downtown.
The more radical of the two master plans under consideration by the LAPD is being pushed by Asst. Chief George Gascon, who is calling for the department to permanently rid the area of its ubiquitous tent and box cities.
Gascon, one of Chief William J. Bratton's top deputies, argues that the department's efforts so far simply have not had a strong enough effect on the homeless problem.
His plan is similar to Bratton's original policing idea for skid row when he arrived in 2002. The chief called for removing the tent cities, but the department scaled back its plans after the American Civil Liberties Union sued, saying the practice violated homeless people's civil rights.
But others in the LAPD are backing a blueprint for skid row drafted by George Kelling, the noted Rutgers criminologist who is a co-author with James Q. Wilson of the "broken windows" theory of policing that Bratton has adopted. The theory holds that punishing lesser offenses leads to reductions in major crimes. Kelling argues that rather than removing homeless people wholesale from the streets, the LAPD should focus on criminals, including drug dealers and prostitutes, who he says create a "culture of lawlessness" in the area.
The divide is generating anxiety among service providers and officials. Bratton has said he is mulling what approach to take, with a decision expected in the next few weeks.
