Tag: LAPD

The Folks Who Moved in Next Door.

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For about five years, an encampment of vagrants, with cars and trucks full of bikes, shopping carts, electronics, blankets, and various junk, spread their filthy circus along the corner of the Vanowen and Kester.

There were men and women in parked cars, and drugs, and women in the back seats of the vehicles. The sidewalk was taken over by them. They had complete autonomy and seemingly the blessing of the city to live outside.

Our senior lead officer, whose name I don’t care to name, cleared them away. He appears monthly on a Facebook chat room to brag about the latest clearance. “Happy to say they are gone,” he will say on Zoom.

But the camp of tramps always comes back.

They next set up their junk show on Lemay, in a quiet residential area, where they lived along the parking lot that borders the Casa Loma College.

Day and night they sat out on lawn chairs or slept on mattresses behind trees. One man danced with his dick out for an 8-year-old girl who rode her bike past. Complaints flooded LA311. Ms. Nury Martinez, Latin-X Councilwoman, got letters, emails, phone calls. LAPD Van Nuys was called numerous times. Yet the trash camp endured.

Outdoor urination, pot smoking, liquor, prostitution, dumping, disorder, noise, none of it mattered. It stayed in place, just like the homeless circus that has played on for 3,000 days and nights at the NW corner of Gault and Sepulveda. 

Gault and Sepulveda. Another long running blight on the neighborhood ignored by government officials.

After six months, their crap was cleared. 

Two weeks later the tarps and the shopping carts went up along Lemay near Norwich. That took dozens of calls to remove. Then it was gone.

Then they came back to Saloma and LeMay. That lasted a few months.

Now they have reappeared along Columbus Avenue across from the grammar school. While it’s doubtful anyone is actually learning grammar in that one-starred rated school, what’s certain is that the garbage camp is illegally set up in full view. 

When people wonder what drives Angelenos mad, it is this: there is no control on the disorder and criminality of this city and state. 

San Francisco, true jewel of the west, has gone to hell.

Los Angeles, costume jewel of the west, has followed suit.

And when mayoral candidates go on podcasts and talk ad nauseum about their humane and expensive solutions for the poor people who are homeless, you want to scream!

Why should the suffering of private persons, their addictions and mental illness, be allowed such a prominent and destructive place in the lives of all law-abiding citizens in the State of California?

“One of my proposals is to create a $1 billion revolving private equity fund with which to build permanent supportive housing. That’s housing that’s been costing $600,000-800,000 a unit. That can be cut to a third of that cost using a private equity model that has worked on the streets of Los Angeles,” says Mayoral Candidate Mike Feuer.

Is anyone knocked-up on drugs and alcohol going to sober up in a new, unsupervised housing unit?  

Here’s an idea: use the billions in homeless funds to send $100 Visa gift cards to legally housed residents, home owners and renters, who report trash camping in their neighborhoods. Top off the yearly payments to those who report the vagrants at $2,000. Thousands of Angelenos, short on money for gas and groceries, would be impelled to report vagrancy and clean up dumps that have destroyed our city.

Do the people burning down parks and sleeping under tarps on bus benches care to move into a new studio apartment? 

Trash camping?

Don’t permit it. Don’t allow it. Don’t normalize it.

Burning parks, setting fires along freeways, camping out on public sidewalks and streets. This is the state of California, the most technologically advanced region on the planet.

So much money, so much talk, so little results.

Lemay, west of Kester

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On Lemay St. just west of Kester, a trash camp has been removed, then put back, then removed, then allowed back.

Residents of this tidy and pleasant section of Van Nuys know their area is not unique in the suffering brought on by government negligence.

Countless calls, emails, Zoom meetings and tweets have not changed a thing. The trash camps are a steady reminder of how far California has fallen, how pathetic the situation of law and order is.

Three months ago, the LAPD Van Nuys division held their monthly talk and all the Senior Lead Officers spoke. Our man proudly stated he had removed this trash camp, which previously was unhoused on the SE corner of Vanowen and Kester.  The camp then moved itself, shopping baskets and cars, to Lemay.

I don’t blame him or law enforcement for “allowing” the trash camps. This one, like many, has been cited for prostitution, drug dealing, and indecent exposure. The police are handcuffed by law.

No Stopping Any Time.

A neighbor on NextDoor wrote that her granddaughter was playing outside when one male vagrant came up to the little girl and pulled his pants down.

He allegedly still lives in a tent along Lemay. Why?

There are many reasons to be depressed about life in Los Angeles today. In fact, progressive, thoughtful, sensitive Councilman Mike Bonin, who famously allowed murders, trash fires and thousands of vagrants to camp out and cause mayhem during the pandemic, has said he will not run for reelection, citing his personal battles with depression.

Bless him. But let him be gone to serve his emotions first so millions in our city can awaken happier tomorrow. 

Lest people who read this essay think I am advocating against the Democrats or liberalism, I instead am posturing for a middle ground of care for the addicted, and housing for the lost and beaten down. 

You can arrest them, jail them, deport them, or kill them, but only if you live in China or Russia. For those of us who still believe in American ideals, the law constrains us from revenge, even as we seethe in anger and contempt for the disorder and crime around us. 

But we also need local laws that apply to the entire city. We cannot stop enforcing with exceptions. Like near a school or hospital or homeless services building.  

It categorically must be completely illegal to camp out and live in a public park, on a public sidewalk, to urinate and defecate outdoors. Anywhere.

We cannot parse our laws to such inanities as prohibited “within 500 feet of a school.”

Imagine if we said you could drive blindfolded, stone drunk at 100 miles an hour, if you never drove past a school?

One of the bitter ironies of Los Angeles is the amount of wasted space that exists where civilized, regulated and sanitary communities could be erected to house the unhoused.

Next to the encampment on Lemay is the sprawling parking lot of the Casa Loma College which used to be a building that was the home to the American Automobile Association.

99% of the time the parking is empty. The entire lot, building and parking, is 112,994 square feet, 18 times larger than a 6,000 square foot “single family lot.”

Home Depot sells a backyard studio building that is 10’x 12’. It costs about $45,000.

Even if that is overpriced, imagine if within the bounds of the Casa Loma parking lot an agency or non-profit built 25 of these and there was a full-time security officer overseeing this community? What if this model town became a blueprint for other humane towns throughout Los Angeles?

There are, to be sure, many objections to this, but they are often imaginary, created in the minds of fearful residents who object to new types of supportive communities which are actually superior to the “free market” ones that currently exist.

The Skid Row Housing Trust is an exemplary non-profit which “provides permanent supportive housing so that people who have experienced homelessness, prolonged extreme poverty, poor health, disabilities, mental illness and/or addiction can lead safe, stable lives in wellness.”

They built 13604 Sherman Way, designed by architect Michael Maltzan, in 2014. It is houses 64 people but was bitterly opposed by the community before it went up. Yet it is perhaps the most attractive building built in the entire San Fernando Valley in the last 50 years.

But there is not enough of the good stuff. The trash camps are more numerous than these white paneled residences.

For now, the trash camps along Lemay, and everywhere else in the city, are a daily dose of depression for millions who live in Los Angeles and a barbaric and cruel way to treat people who must, through choice or circumstances, live under plastic tarps along the road. 

Letter From a Neighbor to Councilwoman Nury Martinez

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My neighbor, who has lived in Van Nuys since 1979, is aghast at its condition and appalled at the utter lack of leadership in correcting its continuing decline.

She wrote a letter, intended for Nury Martinez our Councilwoman and now the President of the City Council.

I agree with everything in it. Our community is dying with rampant lawlessness and political leaders who mouth platitudes but have no guts to fight for the forgotten taxpayers and residents of Van Nuys.

Here it is:

“As a long time resident of Van Nuys, 42 years, I have watched its steady decline with dismay.

Among my many concerns is the appalling lack of investment in upgrading and maintaining the city center. All the city buildings are here: the courthouse, the police station, the library, train/bus stops etc. This should be a center of pride for the city, but instead it is a fenced off desert with no landscaping, few trees, garbage and litter everywhere.

Old Post Office

I understand that the homeless problem has impacted all, but other than DTLA or Venice, we are the worst.

3/5/18 Bessemer at Cedros.
Van Nuys, CA 90401 Built: 1929 Owners: Shraga Agam, Shulamit Agam

At one point, a few years ago, Van Nuys Blvd. received a grant titled something like “Beautiful Streets.” There were plans afoot to utilize that money to help VNB from Oxnard to Victory but nothing ever was accomplished. What happened to that money?

In the past I have been to several Van Nuys City Council meetings and found them to be a joke. Most of the Council members seemed preoccupied with eating pizza, nothing was accomplished and many did not even live in Van Nuys.

Once upon a time Van Nuys was a charming little town with thriving shops, and restaurants and a pretty City Center. Now it is a filthy, sad and neglected relic. Come take a drive Along Van Nuys Blvd from Oxnard to Roscoe and tell me if you would feel any pride in living here?

Van Nuys, 1938


At least clean up the median on Sepulveda Blvd between Haynes and Le May. Clean it, plant trees and maintain it. Clean up the constant trash along the streets.

This list could go on and on but it would show that you care if you would just do this much, it is the least you could do and it’s a start.

And is it not illegal to litter? What about a litter free campaign and enforcement of the law? LA used to be one of the cleanest cities in the country now it is the filthiest.

My heart is breaking. Please help us!

And if you cannot, let us know whom to vote for who can.”

Beware of Big Promises: 1963

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Community leaders, developers, planners, business people, and boosters are forever promising a brighter day tomorrow.

So it was in Van Nuys nearly 60 years ago.

The new police station, a striking piece of $5 million dollar architecture, whose inspiration appears to be many vertically positioned Philco televisions, was nearing completion on March 29, 1963. The grand civic center, a pedestrian promenade, a library, and several court buildings would complete the ensemble.

  • 1959 Philco Predicta Television

On February 16, 1963, 400 well-groomed white people gathered at the Masonic Temple Lodge on Sherman Way to view the exciting land use plans unveiled by the Los Angeles Planning Department governing the future development of Van Nuys.

A mystery remains: Why was a law enforcement structure removed from the street and shoved way back behind a deserted pedestrian mall?

The idea that a police station, whose presence is ostensibly there to prevent crime, should be buried far from the streets where officers patrol, is one of the confounding results of architectural planning which often presents glorious schematics but fails to consider practical results. Van Nuys Boulevard today is a ghost town, except for those who are there to make crime. A cop or two might reassure diners, drinkers, and those who are out for a nighttime stroll.

And the plans for Van Nuys? What have they produced in the last six decades? Probably the largest conglomeration of urban ugliness, environmental catastrophe and social upheavals within the entire United States.

Our surroundings are here to serve only the needs of cars, our air is dirty, our parks few and overrun with garbage and homeless, and we live under the daily and nightly sounds of gunfire, fireworks, sirens and patrolling helicopters. Our rivers are concrete, our boulevards are decorated with billboards and wooden traffic poles, our corner stores are marijuana outlets or parking lots, and the sidewalks are festooned with shopping carts, discarded sofas and tents.

Though most everything along the wide streets looks like impoverished crapola, the rents are exorbitant, and a “starter” home is $800,000. Any efforts to build higher than four stories brings out the angry loudmouths on NextDoor, and developers are maligned and despised by the general public while bearing ridiculous regulations that require onerous fees and expensive construction that inflates costs and discourages new housing. The little old lady, who inherited the three bedroom ranch house from her parents, and pays $300 a year in property taxes, is usually the bitterest one of all.

“I pay taxes! Why does everything look like shit!” she screams.

What kind of city do we live in? What is wrong with us?

Our system of life on Earth is failing globally, and especially here in Van Nuys.

The lesson: beware of great promises made by the powerful for they only care about themselves.

Credit: LAPL/Valley Times Photo Collection

Hot Prowl on Hamlin.

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Sunday morning, I woke up with a text from a neighbor. 

Someone had ransacked his converted garage, recently remodeled for reality TV. He wondered if I heard anything or thought who might be responsible.

He later sent me a video from his next-door-neighbor showing a masked, gloved, backpack wearing prowler at 2am.

 

He said Mark W.’s car had been tampered with, and Mark T’s, and Ray’s. 

I texted another neighbor, Pablo, about the multiple robberies. He was shocked.

Then Pablo texted me an hour later.

He said his ADU, in back, with sleeping tenant inside, was also hit. The burglar, now a “hot prowl” had taken an Apple Watch.  

Pablo’s wife called LAPD, and six hours later they came and a report was filed.

The thief was caught Sunday night. Apparently, the Apple Watch led the cops to a location on Delano Street. 

The hood had been shaken, but there was some relief. Now we can stay calm until the next fire, robbery, assault, burglary, etc. 

Single Family Home Protest.

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Recently, our neighborhood found out that the owner of a vacant parcel of land wants to construct a single-family home in our area of single-family homes.

Frightened, angered, upset, scared were many longtime residents who saw the picture of the house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a two-car garage.

And rightfully so, for they have seen that single-family houses are a great blight. They produce divorces, affairs, bankruptcies, child abuse, and unemployment as owners struggle to pay mortgages.

LAPD is often called out, and has been for many years, to answer calls at single-family homes, many of which are occupied by people who are battling addiction, depression, and a lack of joy which comes from keeping up a single-family home.

Many of these single-family homes are contributors to traffic, with five, six or even seven vehicles registered at one house. They are environmental disasters with their wasteful use of water for landscaping, for pools, and for the many long showers people who live in these homes take.

On the news, fire season has seen the burning of these houses, and the many millions of dollars in resources it takes to protect houses. Firefighters and other first responders put their lives on the line defending single-family houses.

Unregulated procreation often occurs behind closed doors and draped windows which produces children who clog our schools and clutter our roads, impeding traffic.  Single family homes, with their many rooms, encourage child production, and this has a negative effect on our ailing schools with their bloated budgets.

News stories often feature drive by shootings at single family homes, as well as hostage taking, and there are neighborhoods all over the Southland which constantly are battling violent incidents at single-family homes.

Some single-family homes have unrelated adults living together in sober living houses, and other single-family houses even have unrelated adults sleeping under one roof, a clear violation of moral and ethical traditions. 

So we are organizing a demonstration next week to try and prevent yet another one of these despicable types of housing from blighting our neighborhood.

We will have a protest. And many people will come with signs and scream loudly so that we are not subjected to the unwanted intrusion of yet another home, for someone we don’t know and we imagine we will grow to hate.