PHOTO/CHRIS VENN
LOS ANGELES, CA — In late April I was approached by Tommy Little to help get his property back. He had been cited two weeks earlier for committing the crime of “sleeping on the sidewalk.” His arrest in late April, at his tent on the sidewalk, was for the crime of failing to respond to the earlier citation two weeks earlier. Tommy was released four hours after this arrest but his tent and all his belongings had been confiscated by the city’s Sanitation Department. He was told he could reclaim his property at a designated site by showing a claim slip.
At his arrest, the Sanitation Department arrived with a crew, dressed in haz-mat suits and masks, to confiscate all of his property. They surrounded his tent with yellow tape as if to alert anyone walking by that they might become infected with something. The Sanitation Department then “disinfected” the area with high-pressure spray wash machines.
When Tommy asked about confiscated belongings, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said, “Oh we don’t remove any property, the Sanitation Department handles that.” So Tommy and I went to the official storage unit designated by the city for homeless residents’ confiscated property. We went to the address listed on his property claim and found a big vacant lot with a small shack in the middle.
When we asked the clerks for the property and showed them the claim slip, they said it wasn’t there. They didn’t know for sure but perhaps it was at the Parker Center, the old and now abandoned police headquarters which had been replaced by a new, eight-story, $437 million police headquarters located across the street from city hall.
We went to Parker Center, talked to a clerk, and were shown 18 shipping containers filled with homeless residents’ property. They couldn’t find Tommy’s property until I discovered they had mixed up his name with his neighbor. The police write the name of the homeless person whose property is being confiscated on hazardous tape before the sleeping/living site is razed.
Finally the clerk brought out a large bag from one of the containers and at the very bottom of the bag were two of Tommy’s possessions: a plastic tarp, still in its original packaging, and a clay figurine of Jesus.
Tommy could hardly believe what he saw. He wept. Before the Sanitation Department’s confiscation, all of his property in his tent was new. He had carefully folded his belongings in his tent at the time of his arrest. Now only these two items remained.
This is a stealth war against the homeless, powered by real estate billionaires and messaged by Democrats who weep about the homeless and then evict them—or evict them and then weep to their constituents.
General Dogan is an organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network, located on Skid Row.
This is how the LAPD wages war against homeless Americans. Tommy’s story is not unique. Armed robbery by cops is a frequent occurrence on Skid Row, with the full approval of Mayor Garcetti and L.A. County Judges. Stories like this will never be told by the L.A. Times.
They say “Get back.” We say “Fight back.” The good people with Black Lives Matter are still occupying City Hall until Chief Charlie Beck resigns. Simple justice is all we are asking for.