Plenty of folks in Los Angeles have been taking a hard look at Arizona the state passed a law that gives law-enforcement officials the right to detain anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant, and to arrest anyone who cannot show proof of citizenship or legal residency.
Not many of us consider comparable behavior by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in the Skid Row district of Downtown, where stop-and-search practices that appear to be questionable on constitutional grounds occur every day.
It is commonplace for Skid Row residents to walk down the street and observe an LAPD patrol car with lights flashing, parked askew in the middle of the street. An individual usually stands handcuffed nearby. While one officer radios in for identification verification, another searches the person and his possessions. Before the officers release the detainee from temporary custody, his personal information is recorded on a Field Investigation Card to be catalogued for future reference.
This exercise in Skid Row takes place daily and has been going on for a long time.
In 2003, four Skid Row residents — Donald Fitzgerald, Delbert Hudson, Dilworth Menefele, and Mario Youngblood — sued the City of Los Angeles, alleging that an LAPD search-and-seizure policy violated the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. on Constitution, which guarantees protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. They challenged the police practice of taking individuals from the Skid Row area into custody and detaining them after performing warrantless searches without reasonable suspicions of parole or probation violations or other crimes.
The plaintiffs asked for injunctive relief. A federal court approved a settlement between the parties in December 2003, and granted an injunction prohibiting LAPD officers from conducting detentions or searching persons or their possessions without reasonable suspicion that the person had committed a crime or violated parole or probation.
Soon afterwards, the plaintiffs produced evidence that the LAPD was not abiding by the terms of the settlement, and court extended the injunction. The latest settlement agreement was in April 2009, when the court granted the extension and expansion of the injunction and further restricted the behavior of the LAPD because "even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to defendants, they have admitted to an unconstitutional policy."
The extension and expansion of the injunction meant that officers could no longer search a person or his possessions when that individual was merely cited for an infraction or a misdemeanor and then released. In addition, they could no longer compel a person to answer whether he or she was on parole or probation.
For now, both parties have settled the legalities; however, many Skid Row residents feel the issue is far from over.
"The police continue to stop people for no reason," says Robert Johnson a long-time member of the Skid Row community. "After they demand your ID, the first thing they ask is if you are on parole or probation."
That question sparks fear in Skid Row because a sizable percentage of the community is either on probation or parole.
"Everyone knows that they better not leave home without an ID," says Johnson. "If they are stopped without one in [their] possession, the officers will harass them about their parole or probation status. The fear is that you will go to jail and your parole or probation will be violated for no reason. If that happens you must serve the rest of the sentence for a past offense behind bars."
The situation gives many Skid Row residents a sense of helplessness that stems from the belief that they can do nothing about the LAPD's treatment of the community without the support of their neighbors. Some are dismayed that individual citizens and organizations, including some leading African-American churches in the city, have been very loud in their protest of the Arizona law but silent when the police carry out a similar sort of targeted enforcement in Skid Row.
"None of the churches care about that," Johnson says. "They just serve food and figure that is enough. Face it. Nobody cares about anything that is going on in Skid Row."
Wesley Nelson lives and works in Skid Row, and he says he sees the Arizona law as a local issue for the neighborhood.
"If one person loses his rights in Skid Row or in Arizona, a person can lose his rights anywhere," Nelson says. "The fight for our Constitutional rights is everyone's fight."
Walter Melton is a writer for the L.A. Garment & Citizen.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
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