In Los Angeles, a growing number of murder victims are homeless, police say

 

Susie Rangel doesn’t keep up with the news and hadn’t heard about recent high-profile killings of homeless people in the Los Angeles area.

Rangel, 40, had just moved from a large homeless encampment in a secluded area off Burbank Boulevard in the Sepulveda Basin to a home in Sylmar after years of being without shelter.

“This was a safe place….we try to be our brother’s keeper,” Rangel said Tuesday at an encampment strewn with tents, old furniture, packed shopping carts, bicycles and dirt-laden clothes. She estimated that more than 30 people live there.

But the mother of four knows other people experiencing homelessness haven’t been as fortunate.

While homeless people account for less than 1 percent of the city’s population, about 16 percent of all murder victims in Los Angeles this year have been homeless, according to Los Angeles Police Department officials.

As of Saturday, 31 of the city’s 198 murder victims this year were identified as homeles, including four in the San Fernando Valley, according to Josh Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

The figures represent a marked increase over the last few years in the number of homeless people who have fallen victim to murder. During the corresponding period in 2016, 20 murder victims were identified as homeless, amounting to 9 percent of the total number of the city’s murder victims. In the same period in 2017, 23 murder victims were homeless, which accounted for 11 percent of the city’s overall total at the time, according to the data.

The number of murdered homeless victims in the city this year already is more than double the 14 homeless people reported killed during that period in 2015. But police say some of that is due to more accurate reporting.

“It emphasizes the victimization that’s occurring out there on the streets,” said LAPD Cmdr. Dominic Choi, the department’s homeless coordinator.

“There’s always two sides to this homeless issue, this homeless effort. (There are) those that want nothing but service providers out there and those that feel we need enforcement in these communities as well. It’s a challenge and a struggle we deal with every day.”

The murders include the brutal beatings of two homeless men, Branden Ridout and Kelvin Williams, in downtown Los Angeles in September. Ramon Escobar, 47, has been charged in connection with these deaths, along with the killing of a man who was sleeping under the Santa Monica Pier.

While homicides overall have been dropping in the city, the numbers have increased for those experiencing homelessness, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said.

Moore attributed the increase partly to the city’s rising homeless population and the department’s growing awareness around tracking homeless victims.

“In the past, it may have just been a person in the car, or a person on the street who was attacked and they lost their life, but we didn’t look to see what their status was – if they were homeless,” Moore said at the sidelines of a conference on community policing this week in downtown Los Angeles.

He also said it could also be due to an increase in violence within the homeless community.

Seven percent of homicide cases this year involved a homeless suspect, which was roughly the same percentage the two prior years, according to the data.

“These are communities that are very difficult,” Moore explained. “People are desperate, and people are at wit’s end, and are suffering mental illness and many other challenges, so it’s a very unstable environment.”

About 31,516 homeless residents were identified in the city according to this year’s homeless count, a 5 percent decrease from the previous year.

LAPD has shifted its posture toward the homeless population from one of only enforcement to adding outreach and education, Choi, the LAPD commander, said.

Police are working closely with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority along with city sanitation officials, while referring many more homeless people to critical services, he said.

“We’re taking potential victims off the street and that’s really how we’ve changed in the past year our posture,” Choi said.

A 55-year-old man in Van Nuys who gave his name only as Tommy said Tuesday that he became homeless from being addicted to heroin since 1990. He said he spent more than two decades of his life behind bars.

“It all boils down to drugs,” he said, adding that his addiction has led to convictions for assault, robberies and residential burglaries. “I’ve lost everybody in my life because of drugs.”

But Tommy, who prefers to be homeless because “no one tells me what to do,” said he doesn’t feel the need to protect himself on the street.

“It was more dangerous in prison,” he said.

The face of homelessness varies across the city and includes the young and old as well as people affected by mental illness, substance abuse and other challenges, Moore said.

The police chief called homelessness the “greatest humanitarian crisis of our generation” and said that addressing it is a shared responsibility.

He said the city and county need to build supportive housing and offer bridge services to help this vulnerable population successfully transition to a new life. Part of the solution is speaking to communities who are fearful of such housing, he said, and explaining how it can contribute to a community’s safety.

“That is a role for law enforcement as much as it is for every Angeleno,” Moore said.