This past week I was able to meet some senior lead officers with the Hollywood police. Occaisionally there will be times when the police will come through with a dump truck and the "Hollywood beautification team." They will not only pick up large trash items (such as leftover Christmas trees) but will also clean up encampments and send people on their way who are staying in the encampments. On Tuesday of last week, we rode around in our van following the police officers.
*Note: This is for the internship portion of the program here, in which I ride around in a van with a partner and ask homeless people if they need any services.* The police were warning the homeless people in encampments that on Wednesday, they would be cleaning out the area and the people would have to leave. We were there to offer bus tokens to anyone wanting to go to a winter shelter, as we had no room in our shelter. A couple of the officers we rode with started to get angry with the homeless people. "We've seen you here before," they said, "and when we try to help you, you don't go with the people we bring to help you. This looks like crap, we're coming through to clean it out tomorrow." There were more blunt statements like this said, and then we moved on to the next encampment.
Wednesday rolled by, and we were not sure what to expect. We most definetely did not want to associate ourselves with the police who were forcing the people to leave their only homes, but we wanted to be there to help the people access services. Imagine our frustration when clients began to look at our team differently. When I asked one particular client who we had started to build rapport with if he wanted a lunch, he just looked at us with eyes that said we had betrayed him. "No, thanks," he said as he walked away.
The hardest part of the day was listening the way that some of the officers were talking to the clients. "Get the hell out and don't come back, and take your s*** with you." One officer actually told me that after working in LA's infamous Skid Row area for 10 years or more, she only saw a handful of 'legitimately' homeless people who weren't substance abusers or mentally ill. As if the people who are those things aren't legitimately homeless?! A few of the officers began to tell the clients where they could and could not move to, based on where the boundary lines of their patroling areas were.
"Don't go over to Sunset," said one officer, because that's my area.
"You'd better not go over there," said the other officer, "because that's my area."
"Where am I supposed to go?" The woman I was talking to asked.
"Go over to Riverside drive," the first officer said, "because that's LA county and not where we go."
I will say that, much to my encouragement, I did meet a couple of officers who were more interested in helping and collaborating with us than shooting down the people they were forcing out. One officer said he had taken a tour of the PATH regional homeless center and he thought all of the Hollywood police officers should take a tour, so they knew what services were there. The officers who I thought were abrubt were in all honesty doing their jobs. It is their job to keep the streets clean and safe. And yet, I look forward to the day when all people can be treated subjectively. Hopefully in seeing the way we treat our clients, the officers can change the way they address the homeless. Overall, the week was successful because it was the start of a relationship with the senior lead officers of the area. The more they know about how we can help people, the more alternatives they can give the homeless people they run into on the streets.
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