LAPD gentrifies Skid Row: as the affluent take the city, poor Black residents are pushed out with force.(NEWS)(Los Angeles Police Department)

FOR DECADES, A 50-BLOCK AREA in downtown Los Angeles known as Skid Row has been a hub for shelters and social services for homeless and extremely poor people, the majority of them Black. Now, amid rapid-fire gentrification of the downtown area, city leaders have implemented a police crackdown on Skid Row that has resulted in the harassment, arrest and displacement of thousands of poor people of color.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The LAPD's "Safer Cities Initiative," launched on Skid Row last summer, is based on the "broken windows" theory of law enforcement, which holds that small signs of "disorder" (graffiti and broken windows) invite more serious crimes to a neighborhood and should be eliminated. Critics of the theory note its historical use to justify crackdowns on marginalized communities--especially poor people of color. "The things that get counted as 'signs of disorder' tend to be signs of poverty," says Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue, a history of modern U.S. policing. "What the theory is doing is reading poverty as disorder and using those 'signs of disorder' as an excuse to bring additional police attention and additional sanctioning to areas where poor people live."

Since the summer of 2006, there have been more than 6,000 arrests in Skid Row, an area with a population of 10,000 to 15,000 people (about 4,000 of whom are homeless) on any given night. More than 100 new officers have been assigned to the neighborhood in the past year, so that now police officers on foot, in patrol cars, on bicycles and mounted on horses are a near-constant presence. Deborah Burton, who lives here in subsidized housing, said she has been stopped while simply walking down the street ...