LAPD Says Streets Are No Place Like Home

Here is a look at some of the legal issues surrounding camping by the homeless on the streets and sidewalks of skid row.

Question: Why is the issue so controversial?

Answer: The city of Los Angeles has an ordinance that prohibits people from camping on streets and sidewalks. Such camps are a particular problem on skid row, which has the city's largest concentration of homeless people. In 2003, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit challenging the ordinance.

The suit was brought on behalf of six homeless people, including Robert Lee Purrie, who has lived in the skid row area for four decades and said he slept on the streets because he could not afford a hotel and there were not enough shelter beds. Purrie was cited for sleeping on the street twice before police arrested him in 2003. He spent a night in jail, was given a 12-month suspended sentence and was ordered to pay $195 in restitution and attorney's fees. When he was released, all of his possessions -- including his tent, blankets, cooking utensils and personal effects -- were gone, according to the suit.

Q: What happened to the lawsuit?

A: In April, a federal appeals court invalidated the city's sleeping ordinance, saying the Los Angeles Police Department cannot arrest people for sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks on skid row. Because there are not enough shelter beds for the city's homeless, Judge Kim M. Wardlaw wrote in the majority opinion, prohibiting homeless people from sleeping on the streets was a violation of the 8th Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.

"The city ... apparently believes that [the plaintiffs] can avoid sitting, lying and sleeping for days, weeks or months at a time to comply with the city's ordinance, as if human beings could remain in perpetual motion. That being an impossibility, by criminalizing sitting, lying and sleeping, the city is in fact criminalizing [the plaintiffs'] status as homeless individuals," Wardlaw wrote. In dissent, Judge Pamela A. Rymer wrote that the LAPD "does not punish people simply because they are homeless. It targets conduct -- sitting, lying or sleeping on city sidewalks -- that can be committed by those with homes as well as those without."

Q: What was the city's response to the ruling?