Video shows indigent hospital patient being left on LA's Skid Row

[Kadie]

Video shows indigent hospital patient being left on LA's Skid Row
By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer


Last Updated: March 23, 2006, 04:55:28 PM PST


LOS ANGELES (AP) - A videotape of an elderly woman wandering Skid Row in a hospital gown and slippers is being examined by authorities investigating 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 Skid Row, authorities said. Videotape recorded Monday by a surveillance camera outside the Union Rescue Mission showed a taxi cab drive out of camera view. Moments later, Reyes appeared from the direction of the cab.

Reyes wandered the street for about three minutes before a mission staff member brought her inside.

The city attorney's office is investigating.

"The tapes have been turned over to us," city attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan said Thursday. "We have been looking into homeless dumping for some time and this (tape) gives us another example of what has been going on."

For several months, city officials have been looking into alleged dumping of homeless people in Skid Row, a ramshackle area of downtown. Several hospitals have acknowledged that they put some discharged indigent patients with nowhere else to go into taxicabs headed to Skid Row because the area offers the best chance for getting services and shelter.

more...
http://www.modbee.com/state_wire/story/11966783p-12730218c.html


:cry:

[allalone]

1. this is an outrage

I wonder how long this has been going on?

[brook]

2. For at least 30 years...

maybe not at this level...but it's been happening for a very long time. I worked for an *elite downtown group* in LA back in the 70's and their public mission was to eliminate the devastation of *Skid Row*. It was a total fraud and an untenable position from my point of view.

These are the issues that we and our elected officials need to address, but they fall through the cracks because the solutions are not lucrative for the military-industrial complex.

[Erika]

3. How very sad. How very UnChristian

In Ahnold's and W's compassionate conservative spiel.

[Flying Dream Blues]

4. Words fail me. This is the 2nd time in a few days I have heard bad

things about Kaiser hospitals. How could anyone allow this? I thought all hospitals had social workers on staff who could have seen that this didn't happen. There needs to be an end to this idea that "it's not our problem." The SHAME of whoever did this! And thank God for the mission.

The Indigo Girls said it best:


Hammer and a Nail

Clearing webs from the hovel
a blistered hand on the handle of a shovel
I've been digging too deep, I always do.
I see my face on the surface
I look a lot like narcissus
A dark abyss of an emptiness
Standing on the edge of a drowning blue.
I look behind my ears for the green
Even my sweat smells clean
Glare off the white hurts my eyes

Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.

I had a lot of good intentions
Sit around for fifty years and then collect a pension,
Started seeing the road to hell and just where it starts.
But my life is more than a vision
The sweetest part is acting after making a decision
I started seeing the whole as a sum of its parts.
My life is part of the global life
I'd found myself becoming more immobile
When I'd think a little girl in the world can't do anything.
A distant nation my community
A street person my responsibility
If I have a care in the world I have a gift to bring.

Repeat Chorus

[faithnotgreed]

5. this is definitely kicked and sadly recommended

[Golden Raisin]

6. Compassionate conservatism!

Those who have take care of themselves. The rest can all starve. Soon they'll be skipping the Skid Row step and just send them to camps to be gassed. But the richest country the world has ever seen has our hard-earned tax trillions to piss into the BushCo quagmire of Iraq.

[NMMNG]

7. Don't have any money? Out you go!

Such is life under "Compassionate Conservativism". :eyes:

[Lasher]

8. I guess some people have nowhere to go

when they are released from a hospital or jail. So they drop them close to the Union Rescue Mission. You would wish that they would at least be good enough to contact the Mission and tell them they're bringing another one over.

This is what we have become. Throw the useless eaters out into the street like garbage, while the wealthy elite wallows in their unearned lavish excess at the expense of the other 99% of Americans.

[RedEarth]

9. My God.... that's unbelievable ...... dump them on the street

[bleedingheart]

10. Ah ...the culture of life

[leftyladyfrommo]

11. I just saw this, too.

We have become a third world country. 37 million in this country live in poverty.

And our answer is to spend all of our money overseas.

[chat_noir]

12. [phone]

...in case you have any extra long distance minutes due you


Kaiser Permanente Hospital
9400 Rosecrans Ave
Bellflower, CA 90706-2200

[phone]