*There’s yet another deadly threat to Blacks. This time it’s the Blacks who make up a disproportionate number of those on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, which is arguably the largest in the nation. The threat is murder violence. The murder rate, almost exclusively from gun violence, is astronomically higher than that for Los Angeles as a whole. The nonsurprise is that there is so much violence on Skid Row. Many would say What else is new.
According to LAPD figures, nearly three hundred people were victims of gun violence in the ten years from 2015 to 2025. Even this may be an undercount. The L.A. County Medical Examiner revealed that there were more than two dozen other possible victims of gun violence in the same area in 2024 and 2025. These victims were not included in the LAPD figures. Overall, the murder rate from guns was seventeen times higher than in the rest of the city.
Nowhere in the city is there a death rate from gun violence remotely comparable. The death rate is even more startling given that the Skid Row area of DTLA encompasses a relatively tiny geographical area, really just a few blocks.
The equally stunning, maybe puzzling, fact is that the Black men and women who wind up on Skid Row are probably the least likely to have access to guns. Yet they are literally under the gun there.
Scroll to continue reading
One solution to reduce the gun violence death rate there that has been continually bandied about is to clear out the encampments. The rationale is that the massive encampments that sprawl through Skid Row are flashpoints for violence.
Hundreds of the poorest of the poor among Blacks, often afflicted with drug and alcohol addiction, suffering colossal mental health challenges, and physical mobility issues, are there. Plus, there’s the ever-present threat of physical assault. And with a greater number of women on Skid Row, rape is also a major danger. This volatile mix of debilitating factors pushes many to violence
However, simply ripping down the encampments and trying to sweep the area of its inhabitants is not the answer. It will take a massive expansion of housing, drug and alcohol abuse treatment, mental health services, job and skills training, and support programs to aid the men and women there. In the absence of that, simply tearing away the encampments as a solution is a pipe dream.
If that happened, it would guarantee two things. One, the men and women will take up residence in other parts of the city. The other is that the type of violence that accompanies them will also create a major problem and threat in those places where they would eventually land.
We’ve already seen one glaring byproduct of the city’s dilemma in dealing with the unhoused. That is sidewalk sleeping. That doesn’t involve any encampment. Sadly, the majority of those are Black men, the same ones who fit the profile of those most likely to be victims of gun violence.
A few years back, it was not an uncommon sight to see these men sleeping on an L.A. sidewalk. But their sidewalk bed was on or near Skid Row in or around downtown L.A.
That was then. Now it’s not an uncommon sight to see Black men sprawled out, stretched, or just plain encamped out on a cold, bare sidewalk in just about any part of Los Angeles. That sight is so common in fact in South L.A. that it no longer draws anything other than a passing glance—if that.
The reasons for the surge in sidewalk sleeping by Black men have been repeatedly cited and are familiar. Lack of jobs, lack of education, lack of mental, drug, and alcohol services, abundance of systemic racial and economic bias, and definitely an overabundance of uncompassionate care and indifference.
The blame finger locally is pointed squarely at Los Angeles officials for not doing enough to combat the surge in sidewalk sleeping.
The “where do they go” question has been the perennial question asked every time cities make periodic sweeps of homeless encampments, as well as the men and women sleeping on the sidewalks.
The sweeps amount to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. That is simply shifting them from one part of the city to another, maybe placing a few in temporary shelters, while leaving the rest right back where they started, plopped out on yet another sidewalk.
L.A. city officials have not criminalized those men who are on the sidewalks. They need help and support, and that’s not a jail cell or removal of an encampment. As always, it entails dealing with the cause of the problem. That will take time, resources, and commitment to provide the support they need to ensure they are not the next victim of gun violence. In the meantime, more Blacks will continue to face the grim prospect of death by murder on Skid Row.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is Trump’s Obama Obsession (Amazon and Middle Passage Press). He is the publisher of thehutchinsonreport.net.
(If You Like/Appreciate This EURweb Story, Please SHARE it!)
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: Andrew Gillum Indicted! Former Florida Candidate for Gov. Faces Wire Fraud Charges | WATCH
We Publish Breaking News 24/7. Don’t Miss Out! Sign up for our Free daily newsletter HERE.
