L.A. Homeless Arrested

* Re “Police Arrest 15, Cite 70 in New Skid Row Crackdown,” Dec. 9: The crackdown on homeless people on skid row by the police will do nothing more than scatter homeless people into other communities. Unless we help them deal with substance abuse issues, provide mental health care, give them an emergency bed and help them find a job, they will end up in another part of our community--Hollywood, Santa Monica, Pasadena or Long Beach. Arresting homeless people is not the path out of homelessness.

JOEL JOHN ROBERTS

Exec. Dir., People Assisting

the Homeless, Los Angeles

*

The LAPD stopped an unarmed homeless man, claiming he fit the description of an armed man in the area. If there was an armed man in the area, then why were 30 LAPD officers busy arresting innocent homeless people for jaywalking and displaying anti-LAPD signs, instead of searching for the potentially dangerous armed man?

ANNE ARCHER

Irvine

*

Regarding the LAPD’s skid row crackdown, one is reminded of Shakespeare’s King Lear: “Through tattered clothes small vices do appear/ Robes and furred gowns hide all.”

These are offenses that are winked at in the more affluent parts of L.A. The spectacle of a society that cannot afford to provide all of its citizens with housing and then sets its dogs on them is one that should shame us all. If we can judge a society by the behavior of its police, then we should despair for ours. The LAPD is more a totalitarian organization than a civil police force. This latest outrage reeks higher than the odor from the foulest wretch of skid row. With the morrow, what new obscenities will the LAPD present to us?

JOSEPH GIUS

Los Angeles