Safer Cities Initiative facts for kids
The Safer Cities Initiative is an initiative to reduce crime in Skid Row, Los Angeles. While the initiative prominently resulted in heightened police enforcement in Skid Row, it had other facets including prosecuting hospitals who dumped poor patients at Skid Row, as well as services like tree trimming.
Contents
History
Skid Row, Los Angeles had a high rate of crime compared to other regions of the city. In 2005, Los Angeles Police Department undertook a pilot program called "Main Street Pilot Project", seeking to reduce the density of homeless encampments in Skid Row. The Safer Cities Initiative was officially announced on September 24, 2006 by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Fifty officers were hired for the Safer Cities Initiative Task Force, which focused on an area less than 1 sq mi (2.6 km2).
Results
Cost
SCI was criticized for its costs. It cost $6 million annually just for personnel costs for the fifty officers. This was more than the city's annual budget ($5.6 million) for all homeless shelters and services. With each arrest costing Los Angeles about $4,300, SCI arrests cost the city $118 million by 2009.
Social impact
The executive director of LAMP Community, a nonprofit in Skid Row that works on issues and services for homeless people, criticized SCI, saying the entire premise was "to invest enormous police resources into very, very petty things, which are really a consequence of someone's illness or a consequence of having to survive on the streets." The Los Angeles Community Action Network called for an end to the Initiative in 2010 with petitions and a report, saying that it resulted in human rights violations for residents of Skid Row, many of whom expressed that they did not feel safe from police violence and harassment.
Sociologist Alex S. Vitale criticized the SCI and said it should not be replicated in other cities due to its failure to reduce homelessness prevalence, its high cost, and its modest effect on crime reduction. Because monetary fines were levied against people without the means to pay them, the citations turned into arrest warrants. In a fourteen-month period, 1,200 people were arrested in the SCI targeted area for unpaid citations.
Skid Row residents became "copwise" through their numerous interactions with law enforcement via the SCI, becoming more skillful at avoiding officers' attention. Residents also implemented a Community Watch to document police officer behavior, or "police the police". Resistance strategies against some of these policing tactics eventually resulted in a legal injunction that prevented routine confiscation of property by law enforcement.
