The Region - News from June 1, 1987

Eight demonstrators and at least three times as many police officers showed up at a scheduled demonstration at the Hancock Park home of Mayor Tom Bradley to protest a planned crackdown by the Police Department to clear Skid Row streets of homeless people living in sidewalk campgrounds. As a police helicopter circled overhead, Adam Bennion, head of the Los Angeles Union of the Homeless, confronted Deputy Mayor Michael Gage about plans to relocate the homeless to hotels, claiming that single-room-occupancy hotels were dangerous centers for criminal activity. The hotels, said Bennion, are “just places that guarantee a thief a lair.” Gage said that he would meet with representatives of the homeless this week in his office.