How the Task Force Won Over the City and LAPD

By MARYAM ZAR | Special to the Palisadian-Post

An interesting comment came up at the last meeting of the Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness: A Palisadian in the audience remarked how wonderful it was to see an increased police presence along the beaches and bluffs in the Palisades, dissuading new homeless people from staking ground and encouraging people to take the offer of service offered by the PPTFH.

It’s true that the task force has been able to secure an LAPD detail that was once thought unlikely. In addition to the added police resource dedicated to our community by Operations West Bureau Captain Tina Nieto, we have also had the benefit of our transient detail now making almost daily early morning swings tough the Palisades, as well as the attention of LAPD’s watershed department as well as LAFD and Beaches and Harbors cooperation in ways we’ve never enjoyed before.

The City Department of Recreation and Parks, led by Captain Albert Torres, has worked in tandem with PPTFH to dismantle illegal encampments and support homeless people.

But this kind of support did not come overnight.

When the task force first began its work in 2014, we had nothing but a problem on our hands and a handful of individuals to craft a solution.

We learned that law enforcement’s hands were tied in ways we would never have guessed.

LAPD, along with our neighborhood prosecutor from the City Attorney’s office Veronica de la Cruz Robles, told us that homelessness was not illegal and most low-level, quality-of-life offenses were either not criminal or easily forgiven by courts.

At the same time, we were told by everyone involved in law enforcement in the Palisades that additional LAPD resources for a community that is statistically safe would not be possible.

We came up with a two-pronged strategy to help transition people out of homelessness and more enforcement support.

Once we had merged these two strategies into one, we could go to our ever-supportive Captain Nieto and ask for more.

We appealed for a shoreline patrol to the Palisades—given not only our unique circumstance as a coastal town that was inherently attractive (and now even more accessible) to homelessness, but also as a caring community that was addressing homelessness in a meaningful way.

The fact that we weren’t simply demanding more police action, but were coupling it with the ready availability of services was pivotal in our ability to make our case.

Last June, we were able to secure a seasonal “beach patrol” unit through the summer.

Our beach patrolman was Officer “Rusty” Redican, whose inherent understanding of the issues made him indispensable.

We told Captain Nieto that his brand of enforcement and heart was helping.

As a result, our seasonal beach detail was converted to a year-round beat and we will not lose Redican.

The support we enjoy today was not possible the day we
started.

It evolved over time.

We educated Palisadians in homelessness, crafted relationships with city and county agencies, participated in two citywide homeless counts, and proved our credibility through securing a full-time outreach team from the social services agency Ocean Park Community Center (OPCC).

We listened more than we talked, adjusted with knowledge and asked incrementally for support—not with a demand but a mandate that came with credibility.

That is how we earned support from the city family, for which we are grateful today. It was never a given, and it still isn’t. It was hard won, on the heels of great work by the team that is PPTFH.