To quote KNBC, channel 4 here in LA "They allegedly rendered the men unconscious with a mix of prescription drugs and alcohol before running over them with a car."

Guess what, the charges were dropped! Fortunately just for under 2 hours. Allk the same, please tell me what priority you think LA has placed the Homeless when they let time limits go by and don't try murderers in court.

I try to remain un-oppinated here, but is this for real?!?!?

If the weather is giving you a SERIOUS issue or problem, call
Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management
1275 N. Eastern Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90063
(323) 980-2261
(323) 881-6897 fax

10 Los Angeles Hospitals are being sued for releasing patients onto the streets of Skid Row Los Angeles. Two well publicized events of Homeless Dumping involve L.A. Metropolitan Medical Center and Kaiser's Bellflower Hospital.

ProCare ambulance services and other transportation companies have not been included in the legal action.

As reported in the LA Daily News

Trash and public health problems in Skid Row are being exacerbated by a longstanding downtown business practice of dumping trash on Los Angeles' streets, officials were told Tuesday.

As the Los Angeles City Council weighed a $250,000 proposal to hire crews to remove the growing piles from city streets, the City Attorney's Office said local businesses - particularly in the cramped Toy District - are partly to blame.

"It has been a problem for years," said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association. "There is no room for large Dumpsters, and the businesses have taken to just dumping their trash into cans and the street.

"The homeless come by and rip apart the boxes and take what they want

to be resold and then dump the rest."

Lopez said the association's business-improvement teams have been collecting 10 tons of trash a day from the area amid a recent crackdown on crime.

Deputy City Attorney Jeff Isaacs said the city has failed to adequately enforce city laws requiring companies to hire private trash haulers. He said his office has begun notifying businesses that they face fines of up to $1,000 for dumping trash.

Cleaning up Skid Row has taken on a sense

of urgency during the past month amid a Safer Cities Initiative that has assigned 50 additional police officers to the area to deal with drugs and crime.

Complicating the cleanup has been confusion about what items the city can legally remove as trash and what may be considered personal property of the homeless.

Assistant City Attorney Chris Westhoff said the city has started to have those arrested identify their personal property. The city then puts those items in a warehouse while all other items can be removed by city crews.

But Westhoff said there has been a problem in getting crews to clean up.

Bill Robertson, director of the Bureau of Street Services, said his agency needs an additional $250,000 to assign crews that could respond within 10 minutes to a cleanup call.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, who represents the Skid Row area, said she hoped to find the funds within the next week to pay for the crews. She also is trying to find money to pay for 500 additional shelter beds that the city thinks will be needed during the winter months.

Councilmen Ed Reyes and Bill Rosendahl renewed their complaints that the squeeze on Skid Row has forced the homeless into other areas.

"I know we have at least 400 homeless people in my district who weren't there before," Rosendahl said.

Reyes, whose district is adjacent to Perry's, said he is seeing the return of homeless encampments to areas of his district that have been free of the homeless for more than a decade.

"What concerns me is that if we allow this to continue it will make problems worse," Reyes said. "There will be a sense of lawlessness where people will feel free to come into other areas of the city to commit crimes or dump their property."

as reported by ABC7 in LA:

A transient was in custody Thursday for allegedly punching a woman and her baby in West Hollywood, authorities said. Jim Beam, described as a transient from the Sacramento area in his late 50s, attacked a woman and her 3-month-old daughter as they were trying to walk across Santa Monica Boulevard along San Vincente Boulevard at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Bob Mintello.

The woman had been carrying her child in a harness across her chest when Beam allegedly walked up behind them and attacked.

Both mother and daughter were struck on the left sides of their faces, Mintello said. Beam allegedly punched twice, first hitting the mother, then the baby as the mother moved her arms to protect her, Mintello said.

"Like a typical mother, she tried to cover her baby," he said.

The baby received a bruise under her left eye. She and her mother were taken to a hospital and were expected to recover.

This week it is:
Extreme Measures'96. Hugh Grant. A homeless man's mysterious death puts an emergency-room physician on the trail of a doctor who experiments on the living. (R) (2:00)

The Coalition to Preserve Human Dignity, made up of over 40 Musil groups, gave out food and clothing to the poor on Skid Row over the weekend. 3,000 individuals benefited.

This weekend 50 LAPD officers will begin foot patrols in Skid Row, The hope is that more police will mean fewer crimes and drug dealers.

According to Olin Ericksen of the Santa Monica News , Santa Monica is looking to serve food to the Homeless inside and have social services attached to the food service. Santa Monica . According to the article, Santa  Monica will have a voice in picking the new E.D. of LAHSA.

John Cusak filed a restraining order against a woman in LA.

Homeless in life, nameless in death

the L.A. Times writes about the burial of the homeless in Los Angeles.

WIRED MAGAZINE finds that many of the homeless population are wired with internet, cell phones and PDA's. On a side note: Lamp is beginning a program to give the homeless e-mail addresses and a space on the net that will follow them wherever they live.Read more about that in Sonya's Space.

The City ofd Santa Monica has a large number of homeless people living in the mild climate with a variety of services near by such as OPCC and Step Up on 2nd. Santa Monica is looking at sprucing up the city. Here is a quote from the linked article:

a branch of NBC tells a story of Pebble Beach and the fires caused by the homeless camps there.

In the Ventura County Star, they discuss the last minute race to make the change in how people prove they are  citizens.

All though there are signs stating that "no person shall sit or sleep on the sidewalk, the courts have over ruled those laws.

"The court said homeless people should not be blamed for sleeping on sidewalks if they had no alternative because shelter beds were filled."

The entire story can be found in the LA Times.

This means that police can not force anyone to wake up and move from where they are on the sidewalks.