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LA Voice's Mack Reed's Skid Row Ride-a-Long
LAist loves all the blogs in LA and we realize that we don't give enough love to them. It's not because of any reasons other than foolishness and ignorance.
Case in point: last week Mack Reed went on an LAPD ride-a-long and wrote a nice long piece in LA Voice about his experience. Apparently he was shown certain aspects of Skid Row by Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph, that included techniques of dealing with the overwhelming amounts of crime like "the Sitdown Technique" where the cop car would just pull up to where some nefarious activity was taking place and sit there for a while until everyone scattered.
But the most curious insight was that of the Huntington Hotel.
Joseph says pretty much everything goes on in there - gun sales, drug deals, prostitution, counterfeit money exchange, even rumors of kiddie prostitution. "People tell me that if I can shut down the Huntington Hotel, I'd cut down on 40% of the narcotics trade," he says
. The long post is definately compelling and interesting and you feel as if you're the one riding along from the safety of your laptop.More recently the LA Voice led us to a World of Wonder video where they gave cameras to some kids living on Skid Row. This video was the first in a series and the kids show us, literally what the streets have to say about what's been going on. Very little of it is pretty.