LAPD turns out in force to Westlake CARE+ operation: ‘We were raided, treated like criminals’

Unhoused residents confronted a staffer for Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez last Thursday, Oct. 9, after Los Angeles Police Department officers turned out in force to their encampment in Westlake, just as they were preparing to move their belongings for a CARE+ operation that her office had scheduled for that morning.

“We were raided,” Nelson Velasco said during a conversation with Eric Ares, a Hernandez staffer, along with other encampment residents just before 9 a.m. on the morning of the sweep. “We were treated like criminals.”

Velasco and other residents of the encampment, located on Mountain View Avenue just off Beverly Boulevard, said they were rattled by the large LAPD presence and the enforcement that took place.

The encampment residents told The LA Reporter that more than a dozen officers had shown up early Thursday, about an hour before the sweep began. The officers slashed the side of their tents and ordered residents to come out, after which the encampment residents were detained by the officers and their hands bound up in “zip ties” or “flex cuffs.” Several said they were cited for violating Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18, a law that prohibits people from sleeping, sitting, lying down, and storing belongings in certain areas in public.

The LAPD did not respond to The LA Reporter’s questions about the number of officers present and the reason for why they were there that day.

Chance Shurwin, told Ares — who identified himself as Hernandez’s district director — that the sweep had left the encampment residents in a precarious situation.

“This is very dangerous, in our eyes,” Shurwin said to Ares. “We can get seriously hurt, living literally on the street now, day-to-day … We're definitely scared. I don't know if you've been in that [situation], but imagine your son or daughter in our situation — That's what we'd like you to think about, possibly.”

Shurwin then appealed to Ares to provide them temporary shelter, if housing was not yet available. “Temporary,” he told Ares. “That's all we're asking for.”

Ares has also served as Hernandez’s housing and homelessness director, and previously worked at Los Angeles Community Action Network, a group that has actively opposed criminalization of homelessness, including laws like LAMC 41.18.

The LA Reporter on Thursday asked Ares for comment. He declined. Hernandez’s office did not respond to an email sent later that day, requesting comment.

Hernandez represents the 1st District, which is on Los Angeles’s Eastside and includes Highland Park, Echo Park, Pico Union, Koreatown and MacArthur Park.

During the six-and-a-half minute-long interaction with Ares on Thursday, residents repeatedly questioned him about whether there was housing or shelter available. “Do we have housing options?” Shurwin asked a couple of times. Some people also asked if Ares could provide some tents to replace the ones that had been destroyed by that day, with one person saying, “What about tents, at least?”

Ares said he could not guarantee temporary shelter for the residents at the encampment. He also did not offer any specific housing to residents, while also saying he was “happy” to talk people about about their housing options.

Throughout the conversation, Ares objected to talking about anything beyond “housing options,” and said that those conversations needed to be done individually with each person, saying that that this was necessary because he needed to ask people for their private information.

Shurwin told Ares that they were willing to have the conversation be public. Another person asked for specifics on what type of private information Ares needed. Ares responded that he needed to ask for people’s date-of-birth and social security numbers. That resident responded that he felt his date of birth was public information, while questioning whether it was necessary “right this second,” for Ares to discuss his social security number, which he did consider private information.

The LA Reporter was present for the interaction between encampment residents, Ares, and an organizer with mutual aid group LA Street Care. An audio recording of the interaction is provided below. The recording can also be heard here.

Earlier this month, Shurwin had also appealed to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s office for services and housing.

“Every person here is willing to do whatever it takes to improve our circumstances, leave this situation behind, and build stable, productive lives,” he wrote in an Oct. 3 email to Rolando Cruz, who is a “field intervention manager” in Bass’s office, according to a business card shown to The LA Reporter and a staff directory on the Los Angeles city website. “We are urgently requesting any assistance your office can provide to help us transition into safe housing and access supportive services.”

“Please contact me at your earliest convenience so we can discuss possible next steps,” Shurwin wrote. “Your immediate attention and compassion could truly make a life-changing difference for everyone involved.”

Shurwin told The LA Reporter on Thursday he has not gotten a response from Cruz. The mayor’s office has not responded to The LA Reporter’s request for comment about Shurwin’s email, which Shurwin forwarded to The LA Reporter a day before Thursday’s sweep.

During the interaction with Ares last Thursday, Kris Rehl, an organizer with mutual aid group LA Street Care, questioned Ares about who scheduled the sweep. Ares confirmed he was the one responsible for scheduling CARE+ operations in Hernandez’s office. Upon hearing that, several of the residents responded with surprise, with one seeking confirmation from Ares, asking, “You ordered this Eric?” and another person asking him, “Why?”

Even though residents are usually allowed back after a CARE+ operation, which requires that people leave the area while a cleaning operation takes place, one resident, Claire (pseudonym), told The LA Reporter she did not believe that city officials are going to let them set back up where they had been.

Members of the encampment at that location had submitted a letter to Hernandez’s council office in May seeking trash pick-up, port-a-potties, brooms and cleaning supplies and needle disposal. They also demanded permanent housing and said CARE+ sweeps don’t clean, but rather destroy their belongings.

As of Sunday, residents had relocated across the street to Hugo Soto-Martinez’s 13th District, Rehl told The LA Reporter.

“If this is what homelessness teams are doing in progressive districts, then I don’t think these positions should exist,” Rehl said, referring to Hernandez’s left-leaning stances on council that includes criticism of the LAPD, and running for office on a platform opposing the criminalization of homelessness (Soto-Martinez also ran on a platform in which he pledged to end encampment sweeps). “I think money should be given to people living outside. This is not what helping people looks like.”

“Plenty of city council districts don’t have homelessness teams and they do sweeps,” he said. “If homelessness teams aren’t going to sweeps to help people, advocate for them, save their belongings, get them services, get them housing, then I don’t know what they’re doing.”

Several residents on Thursday showed The LA Reporter the citations they were given, which were all for violation of the city’s ordinance, LAMC 41.18, which prohibits sitting, sleeping, lying down and storing belongings in public. Those citations designated the violation as infractions.

One person who was cited under LAMC 41.18 told The LA Reporter she was there that morning to help people move their belongings out of the way for the CARE+ operation. The citation she showed The LA Reporter references a section (a) of 41.18, that pertains to several sections that involves staying in that spot.

Some residents were booked, including one person whose citation included an allegation of a non-violent misdemeanor theft crime.

Violations that encampment residents are being accused of are just that, and have not been reviewed through the legal system.

One of the residents, David (pseudonym), fended off portrayals of their encampment as deserving of the law enforcement presence they experienced. He told The LA Reporter that their “camp wasn't a crime scene — it was where we laid our head at.”

“It's like somebody coming to your house and saying that it's a crime scene when no crime was committed,” he said.

Those who were responsible for what happened had left them without a safe place to be as the weather was getting cold, David told The LA Reporter. By Sunday, weather forecasts were projecting flash flooding and strong winds was headed to Southern California in the coming week.

“You kind of know in your gut when a situation is not going the right way, “ David said, referring to the decisions being made by the council office that ordered the sweep, and the police who rounded them up that morning.

“Everybody has choices to make,” he said. “You can either make your choice to continue to have a situation go bad, or you can choose to change it. I can't control everybody's choices, but I feel like if you were in my situation, you would want some help, you would want some progress. You wouldn't want to be thrown bits and pieces of information, but still [be] in the same situation — especially when they [the city] have funding.”

David also said it would be more understandable “if there was no budget, no funding, and there wasn't anything they could do, you kind of have to deal with it,” he said, but “people voted for there to be a budget."

“So they kind of already are on the same type of page that we are [on] — just there's no immediate help,” he said.

Meanwhile, residents said the sweep has thrown their belongings, and their lives into disarray.

“It's like when you walk into your house after a burglary, and everything's like, everywhere,” Claire (pseudonym) told The LA Reporter, about what she saw when she was given permission to go back into the encampment area, during the sweep, get what she needed before they were thrown away by the city.

She said she saw her “one perfume” shattered on the ground along with a mirror, and the “one picture I have of my son on the floor, stepped on.” Also thrown into the floor were her clothes that she had just spent $20, which was a lot of money for her, to clean at the laundromat this week.

”It's just stupid and heartbreaking for no reason,” she said.

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