Bonin Criticizes Sheriff's Department Over Clearing Homeless Camp

VENICE, CA — Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin is criticizing Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva's move this week to begin clearing homeless encampments in Venice — an area that's under LAPD jurisdiction and not the sheriff's department's patrol.

RELATED: LA County Sheriff Comes To Venice, Moving Into LAPD Territory

"The presence of LASD in Venice is disruptive & counter-productive," Bonin said in a Twitter thread Thursday. "Villanueva should leave outreach & housing to the professionals. It's harmful to strut in & interfere with the work of service providers who are trying to house people, quietly, diligently, and in good faith."

Bonin cited the situation with Robert, a Vietnam veteran living on the boardwalk who told Kate Cagle of Spectrum1 News that sheriff's deputies lied to him and dropped him off at the VA. He slept outside in his wheelchair after deputies dropped him off and threw away his belongings because he thought he was going to be housed.

Update: “they lied to me”

Vietnam veteran Robert says @LASDHQ deputies dropped him off at the VA and left Wednesday. He slept outside that night in his wheelchair after deputies threw away his belongings and cheered he was going to get housed. @SpecNews1SoCal https://t.co/Kn1DPymqz8 pic.twitter.com/ExEsroTpfX
— Kate Cagle (@KateCagle) June 10, 2021

The sheriff's department reported Thursday that this was not the case and that Robert was offered medical treatment and housing, which he declined.

.@KateCagle here are some facts you were unaware of at the time you filed your initial report.

1. The LASD HOST team does not house people, we connect them with service providers who do.

(1 of 4) https://t.co/zGinchxkEA
— LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) June 10, 2021

Bonin argues that moving people into housing solutions will take time.

"The key to housing people is building trust. It is hard to do that while conducting outreach and casework with cameras in tow, while wearing firearms, and while threatening to make arrests," Bonin said via Twitter.

Villanueva told reporters this week that the department aims to clear the camps by the July 4 holiday.

He accused Bonin and Mayor Eric Garcetti of hampering the Los Angeles Police Department in its ability to do its job as it relates to such encampments.

Patch reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department for comment. The mayor's office did not respond to the request for comment.

"LAPD is committed to working with all of our public safety partner agencies and elected officials to improve the safety of our communities, including efforts to increase outreach and provide needed housing and supportive services in the Venice Beach community and elsewhere," a media spokesperson from the department told Patch.

Venice Community Housing responded to the sheriff's department's actions this week.

"This week, the LA County Sheriff and others unfamiliar with Venice and its unhoused residents held press events on the Venice Boardwalk calling for the forced displacement and criminalization of unhoused people in order to “clean up” the Boardwalk," Venice Community Housing said in a statement. "Time and time again, this approach has proven to fail in Los Angeles and cause harm to people already dealing with crisis, trauma, and the extreme lack of affordable housing across our region and especially on the Westside."

The organization says that the sheriff's outreach team is not connected to the housing and service organizations in Venice and there are nowhere near enough resources to house everyone in three weeks.

"Outreach connected to threats of enforcement and displacement only further isolates most people who have been pushed around from the streets to shelters to jail and back to the streets for years," the organization said.

"Everyone can see the housing and humanitarian crisis in our neighborhood and in our region," the organization said. "While exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, it is the result of decades of disinvestment in affordable housing and other critical resources, systemic racism in land-use policies, housing, employment and mass incarceration policies, and growing income and wealth inequality. Not one politician, one law enforcement official, one non-profit, one neighborhood group is going to suddenly have the ability to solve this crisis because it’s summer and people think that tourists, visitors and local housed and unhoused people are unable to share the beautiful and inclusive space of the Boardwalk and Venice Beach. We actually can share the space, be kind to unhoused neighbors, continue the local outreach and street medicine efforts that support people until they are housed, and put more resources into permanent housing solutions for folks on our streets."

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 9:20 a.m. with a comment from Venice Community Housing.

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