A Bitter End

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It was a harsh and dehumanizing end to the encampment, inevitable under the circumstances. 

A garbled, hurried text message from Gracie, before she was put in handcuffs clutching only her phone and an avocado, informed me that the police were on site at the 405 & Nordhoff. Linda had already been taken away and others were also being detained while officers and Caltrans workers moved in to clear the area once and for all. That the bottom fell out of their tenuous little community settlement was not surprising. A miniature skid row had formed in the vacuum created by lack of cohesive and comprehensive policy. Proper intervention requires compassion for those members of the public often derided as bottom-feeders, and are in fact survivalists hindered by their own impoverishment, vices and bleak prospects. The sidewalks had become unbearably overcrowded and filthy, with trash piling up in bags and pooling up in loose piles against the walls. There were as many as 8-10 separate makeshift living quarters in use, and complaints from residents had increased. Students from nearby Monroe High School and other pedestrians were finding it increasingly difficult to pass. The tipping point, according to accounts from both the campers and the police I spoke to, occurred when a man in an electric wheelchair could not navigate past some of the temporary structures on the sidewalk under the freeway bridge, and toppled off the curb. (see update for clarification)

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The good-natured twenty-something leader of the orange-clad Caltrans team (ten or so workers) told me that he had tried to warn everyone that “something big was coming,” and it was clear that he was taking no joy in this operation. It was true, the oddly contradictory  Municipal Code 41.18 signs that had been planted on the sidewalks a few weeks earlier declaring “no loitering or solicitations,” and the tickets citing violations such as “illegal encampments” that had been written just days earlier were all a portent of doom for the squatters. Now Caltrans and city workers ripped apart the tents and other makeshift shelters, exposing a hoarder’s bounty of all manner of personal possessions, some essential, many not. 

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Terry and Amy were handcuffed, standing fifteen feet apart against the wall under the bridge. Stressed out, they snapped at each other like the old married couple they have become. Amy, who had been on yet another drug-fueled downward spiral in recent weeks pleaded for matches or a lighter so she could have one last smoke before being loaded into the squad car. Sitting against the wall with her hands behind her, she asked me to take her Chihuahua so that it wouldn’t be confiscated. The police agreed I could save the dog, which I ended up leaving with Rachel and Rebecca, who had a pup of their own. The mother-daughter team had been living in the most expansive tent/compound, on state property (the northbound onramp). They were being allowed to hang onto most of their supplies, including their tent, having convinced the police that they were going to receive enough money later that day to afford a motel room. They didn’t get off completely unscathed though, as the usually good-mannered and thoughtful Rachel lost her cool when told she couldn’t salvage her dog’s bowl, and injured her foot kicking a post. 

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Across the street, Gracie, Craig and others were being sequestered along the freeway onramp. Those with previous warrants like Gracie (”misdemeanors”), along with Craig and another man named Mike were in handcuffs. Sixty-six-year-old Gracie’s hands were bound uncomfortably behind her back.  Craig, apparently in the early stages of narcotic withdrawal, was completely despondent, wondering aloud what was going to happen now. After sitting slumped in a plastic chair for more than an hour, he told the officers he preferred to lay prostrate on the warm cement while waiting to be taken away. His posture led one officer to approach me and ask how my photographs would be used, well aware that images of a man laying on the ground, hands bound behind his back while officers hovered around, didn’t look very good from a public relations standpoint. I assured him that I would provide the proper context. Rebecca and the others sort of rolled their eyes, telling us that Craig, the former child actor, tended to be “dramatic” at times. 

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Still, it always pricks the conscience to see humans shackled… 

I watched as Gracie, and later Craig, were escorted in cuffs to where their things were, as an officer asked them what was essential, sifting through the piles of clothing, foodstuffs and personal effects for the items, stuffing them into black plastic garbage bags. Everything that was not salvaged would be trashed. I managed to find one last piece of Linda’s fingernail polish-painted artwork and tucked in my back pocket … 

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The police were professional and patient, for the most part displaying at least a requisite amount of empathy, bound as they were by the statutes they are entrusted to uphold, and their own daily involvement with these situations. “We’re basically social workers with guns,” one young officer with a military background half-joked. He spent several minutes explaining all of the various programs available through the city’s new H.O.P.E (Homeless Outreach Pro-Active Engagement) program, revisiting the litany of reasons why many homeless don’t feel comfortable or even able to stay in shelters or seek other forms of assistance. Watching a young woman light another cigarette, he expressed quiet frustration at Emmy Lu’s refusal to accept an offer to move into a woman’s shelter, preferring instead, even in her seventh month of pregnancy, to live in the street and indulge in bad habits. She was hurriedly and tearfully trying to gather whatever belongings she could pull together before their domicile was destroyed. Mike, her child’s father, sat on the sidewalk across the street with his hands cuffed behind his back, taking everything in stride with disconcerting calm.

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If anything this incident points to the serious need for consideration and thought on how to avoid these kinds of environments from being necessary at all… 

I rode back to the site on my bike several hours later, in the late afternoon, and found Rebecca and Rachel still waiting on a corner with the possessions they were allowed to keep. By nightfall they would be in a motel room … Terry, Amy, Craig, Gracie, Linda and Mike were presumably in the Van Nuys jail. Another couple, who had been living under the bridge for the last month or so, (part of the influx of new campers that Gracie had warned was making the place too overcrowded and dirty), was sifting through the meager remains, debris that had been left behind, deemed to small to be swept into the trucks. The man told me that they had “ducked out” when the law enforcement first arrived that morning, and had waited until now to return, to see what if anything was left behind for them. 

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As his partner Debra poked through the detritus, someone yelled at her from across the street, warning her to “keep your hands off that, it doesn’t belong to you!” It was a pathetic scene, heavy with portent. I asked Debra where they would go now. She glanced around furtively, and told me that she didn’t feel safe going anywhere after this. They had been warned not to even panhandle on the ramps any more. (Note: in a later post it will come to light that this couple Jeff and Debra, are among the lesser-liked for reasons legal and otherwise). It seems that there has been a shift in policy, though what it is exactly is unclear.  One hopeful thought to hold onto– one of the officers confided openly that he thought this should lead to a more cohesive squatting policy between city and state bodies. 

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Hard to believe that just a few weeks ago Gracie had stood in front of the North Hills East Neighborhood Council and tried to plead for understanding on just this issue. She specifically expressed the desire of the more responsible members of the Nordhoff group to keep the area clean and not be a nuisance to the community, which she said in her characteristically straightforward manner, “gives to us so generously.” Yet while she may have been listened to politely, nary a finger was raised on her behalf or on behalf of the others, and the alternative to her laying in the soot of traffic (lest we forget her respiratory health issues) turned out to be a jail cell. That we can’t do better than this for our most unfortunate citizens is just a low-down dirty shame …