Reply #73: LA hospitals dump discharged poor patients on Skid Row - by taxi

[UpInArms]

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=174918

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Authorities are examining a surveillance tape that shows an elderly woman wandering Skid Row in a hospital gown and slippers as they investigate the practice of hospitals and police agencies dumping homeless people downtown.

Carol Ann Reyes, 63, of Gardena, was taken from a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower on Monday to the downtown area known as Skid Row, authorities said.

A surveillance camera outside the Union Rescue Mission showed Reyes walking from the direction of a taxi that had just driven away. She wandered the street for about three minutes before a mission staff member brought her inside.

City officials have been looking into the alleged dumping of homeless people in Skid Row, a ramshackle area downtown.

Several hospitals have acknowledged that they put some discharged indigent patients with nowhere else to go into taxicabs headed to the area because it offers a chance for getting services and shelter. Los Angeles police also are investigating whether other law enforcement agencies dump people without anywhere else to go downtown.

"We have been looking into homeless dumping for some time, and this (tape) gives us another example of what has been going on," said Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the city attorney's office.

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