This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people.

The Safer Cities Initiative as implemented in Los Angeles' notorious Skid Row in September of 2006

was enacted as a part of their crime reduction effort.

Skid Row is a 54-block area in downtown L.A. that has become synonymous with homelessness,

crime, and drugs. Dion Joseph is a law enforcement consultant, author, an active senior lead

officer in the downtown L.A. Skid Row community. Let's take a listen. Okay, in 2005, the year before the initiative, and all my efforts and the efforts and other officers there, we had 95 people die from non-homacidal deaths.

We had 34 people in 2002 died from homicide. So three years into the efforts, we look at 2009, and we had 63 people die in Skid Row, which is a,

think, about a 33% reduction. And we only had five found dead in the streets. You know why?

Because we were able to enforce the tent laws from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. because if we could see

somebody getting raped, we can save them. If we could see somebody overdosing, we could save them.

The fire department can save them, and it worked. It really worked. And we, of course, we allow them to

sleep after 9 o'clock because there wasn't enough shelter. And it was just a really beautiful

time in homicides. We looked at just the following year of 2007, I believe, and I think in the

whole division, six people were murdered. Guess how many people were murdered in Skid Row?

Three. I always tell people, look, I know what we do is not sexy. He wants sexy called the fire department.

They're handsome guys. They look good at our calendars. I love the fire department. They're hardworking guys.

Station 9, shout out. Really great guys.

But, hey, they do to feel good stuff. You know, our job is to respond to the true systemic failures of our

government failing to deal with poverty, homelessness, crime in a common sense way on a consistent basis. That's our, and the mental health

failure. So, anyway, everything was going fine. Everything was going fantastic until about 2011,

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