*According to the Los Angeles Police Department, criminals are using homeless camps to conduct illegal activities.
“A lot of people experiencing homelessness are going through trauma, and so it’s really easy to be taken advantage of,” said Ann Pacia of the outreach program People Assisting the Homeless (PATH), per NBC Los Angeles.
The outlet reports that officers recently found a stolen Maserati at an encampment located in downtown L.A., a hotbed for drug dealers and prostitutes.
“We have officers and supervisors that have been here for 20 years and they’ve never seen that. A stolen car being stripped in a homeless encampment; that’s really thinking outside the box, so to speak, for the criminals,” said Capt. Raul Jovel, Commanding Officer for the LAPD Central.
Meanwhile, as a result of the spike in street fentanyl, the LAPD is seeing a rise in drug overdose deaths in homeless encampments.
“There’s people there preying on the homeless, selling drugs, doing illegal activities,” said Jovel. “There’s victims and enforcers, so to speak, and there’s people who gain a lot by preying on the homeless.”
According to police, homeless encampments are money-making operations that target the weak and vulnerable.
“Prostitution, lewd activity, human trafficking, which is really concerning, but also the property-related stuff: car stripping, receiving stolen property, the narcotics use, and selling from tents, huge problem here in downtown,” said Jovel, per NBC Los Angeles.
“It’s not always safe out here for everyone,” said a homeless man named Q, who has been living on the streets for more than a decade, according to NBC Los Angeles. “There’s a misconception that all homeless people are drug addicts or dirty, and that is not always the case.”
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