Video Camera Catches LA Hospital Dumping Patients on Skid Row

Officials from Kaiser Permanente’s Bellflower Hospital have apologized for what politicians are calling a "troubling" incident that happened on Monday. A video camera mounted outside the downtown Union Rescue Mission recorded a taxi making a U-turn in front of the mission and then driving out of the camera’s view. Just seconds later, a woman walks into the frame from the spot where the cab drove off. She wanders around on the street and sidewalk for about three minutes before staff members from the mission come outside and take her into the building.

The woman, 63-year old Carol Ann Reyes of Gardenia, had been a patient at Bellflower Hospital for three days. In an interview after the incident where she was dumped out on skid row in her gown and slippers, Reyes said that she could not remember what had happened after she left the hospital, and she had no idea how she had gotten to skid row.

Los Angeles police Capt. Andrew Smith has no doubt how she got there. He believes Reyes was taken there against her will. For years, Smith and other LAPD officials have suspected that hospitals and other police departments have been dumping criminals and the down-and-out residents of Los Angeles along downtown’s skid row. Last September, Smith publicly complained about the issue of dumping people released from jails and hospitals to join the other homeless people on skid row. LAPD officials have blamed the sheriff’s department as one of the biggest culprits, accusing them of taking criminals, homeless, and mentally ill people from around Southern California and dropping them off on Los Angeles’ skid row.

Smith, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Division, said he has proof of the sheriff’s department participating in the controversial practice. Smith was on patrol when he saw two sheriff’s deputies drop a man off. "My concern is with the criminal element that lives within the homeless population and that preys upon the homeless population," Smith said. Sheriff’s department officials defended the deputies, saying that they were just helping the man. "This individual was about 12 hours in our lobby, and he’d been arrested earlier for indecent exposure," said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department.

Now there is proof that the Bellflower Hospital is also a culprit. "I’m just concerned about a society that would drop its most vulnerable onto the streets of skid row," said the president of the mission, Andy Bales, who witnessed the taxi dumping Reyes on the street. "It really troubles me." City Councilwoman Jan Perry criticized the hospital’s actions, calling the incident "egregious."

Diana Bonita, vice president of public affairs for Kaiser Southern California, said that the incident violated hospital policy and it would not occur again. Such a pleasantly worded promise may placate critics, but it does nothing for the people now living on skid row who were unceremoniously dumped there through the years by officials who were paid to protect them.