The president of the Los Angeles City Council says that surveillance video taken outside of his North Hollywood district office on Thursday shows police officers from another city dropping off and “abandoning” a homeless person on the sidewalk. He has asked the state to look into what happened.
A police car from the Burbank Police Department pulled up in front of my office, said Council President Paul Krekorian, a Democrat, at a news conference Friday. “Someone was taken out of that car while being handcuffed.” The bonds were taken off. The person who fell on the sidewalk was clearly having a mental health crisis and suffering from physical injuries. The Burbank Police Department officers got back in their car and drove back to Burbank, but they did not help the person or look for anyone who could help them.
The surveillance video shown at the news conference shows two cops helping the man get out of the back seat of their car and taking off what looks like handcuffs. The man seems to lose his balance as he walks away from the car. He waves his arms and falls to the ground on all fours. The police car drives off, and the man later lies on his back. After the video stops, it’s not clear how long he stayed on the sidewalk.
He said that on Friday he put forward a motion asking the Los Angeles City Attorney, the County District Attorney, and the Attorney General of California to look into the situation and “figure out what legal actions should be taken.”
Burbank In a post on Friday, Mayor Nick Schultz said, “The City of Burbank takes the concerns raised by Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Krekorian seriously.” He also said that the city was “gathering all of the facts.”
The Burbank Police Department then said in a statement that they were aware of a video that showed them dropping off the person on the North Hollywood sidewalk.
A police report said that around 8:45 a.m. Thursday, someone called to say that there was a naked person sitting at a bus stop outside of Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. police who arrived found him to be “clear and communicative.” The man dressed after talking to the police, the statement said.
Police say the man told them he was homeless and had been taken from Los Angeles’s Sunland-Tujunga neighborhood to the hospital for a leg injury he got “many years ago.” According to the cops, the man had already left the hospital before they got there and had refused any medical care.
Officers from Burbank Police said they would drive the man “to a place of his choosing.” The man asked to be taken to Sunland-Tujunga, but “ultimately agreed to be transported to the Metro Red Line in North Hollywood.”
“He got into the patrol car on his own and was driven to the Metro Red Line station.” The person asked to be let out of the patrol car to get coffee along the way. “The officers immediately did what he asked, pulled over, and let the person out of the patrol car,” the statement said.
In a statement to CNN on Saturday, Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center said they knew about what happened Thursday morning and that “multiple calls” were made to the police about a person who seemed to be in trouble on a public sidewalk, including one from a hospital security guard.
“It made me angry, and it still makes me angry,” Krekorian said at his news conference on Friday. “It’s hard to imagine that people who are trained and paid to protect and serve the public would take someone who is most vulnerable—someone who is looking for medical care—and leave them on the sidewalk to fend for themselves.” It’s not good enough.
The council member said that after seeing the surveillance video, his staff drove around trying to find the man, whom Krekorian did not name. They found him around 3 p.m. and were able to get him medical care through the Los Angeles Fire Department.
“A lot of people think, and we hear anecdotes, that some of our neighboring cities and counties are pushing their homeless people into the city of Los Angeles because they don’t spend their money on services, shelters, or permanent supportive housing, and they don’t do the basic human things that need to be done to deal with homelessness,” Krekorian said. It’s not often that we get to see something like this with our own eyes, but we know it does happen.
“If you see it like this on a random security camera, I think it happens a lot more often,” he said.
There is an “in-depth investigation” going on right now at the Burbank Police Department into what happened, including what the officers engaged did. The department says that the investigation will look at all body-worn and in-car camera footage, as well as interviews with witnesses and any other relevant information.
The Burbank Police Department said in a statement, “We remain committed to treating the homeless community with compassion and respect. We thank Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian for bringing this matter to our attention.”
