Another Tragedy in Venice
By Mark Ryavec
What can we learn from the tragic death of 29-year old Brendon
Glenn, a beach dweller shot to death in a confrontation with police officers in
front of the Townhouse bar on Windward
Avenue on May 5th?
Well, first that Brendon was yet another traveler, from Troy , New York Venice
is constantly circulating coast to coast.
Next is that Brendon was a troubled young man, struggling to
find a job while still in the grip of an alcohol addiction. He told his counselor at the Teen Project on
Windward the day he died that he had started drinking at 11 AM.
While all his friends on the Boardwalk are quick to remark
on his friendliness, he was combative that night, getting into a physical
altercation with the doorman at the Town House before the police tried to
restrain him.
Some want to read the shooting as part of the larger
national portrait of police violence towards Black men. I see it within the continuum of violent
incidents stemming from the lawless, “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere along the
Boardwalk and elsewhere in Venice .
Here in our beach-side community a supposedly civilized
society allows 741 homeless people – the unofficial count from earlier this
year – to live on the town’s parks, streets and alleys and does almost nothing
about it.
The result is ugly and shows the dysfunction of our city and
county governments which have for too long been more focused on the care and
feeding of its employees than meeting its core mission, which is the care of
its residents and the indigent.
Let’s tally the victims of this
neglect since just August 2013, less than two years.
A transient living in his car in Venice
takes offense at a drug deal gone bad on the Boardwalk and mows down 17
pedestrians with his car, killing Alice Gruppioni, an Italian visitor in Venice on her honeymoon. The driver is now on trial.
A transient is caught on CCTV
beating the crap out of another beach dweller with a chair.
In April of last year a young mother and two children barely
escape a home invasion at 4:30 AM on Horizon as the homeless invader breaks
through a glass door pane, covers their apartment in blood from his cuts and in
his PCP rage pulls two bolted sinks off the wall of the bathroom.
Over several months four more home invasions follow within
six blocks of the Horizon break-in, committed by campers living along Venice Beach
In October of 2014 a transient sleeping on a walk street
attacks Robert DiMassa because Robert’s service dog had urinated near where the
transient was sleeping. The damage to
DiMassa was two broken ribs, severe abrasions on his legs, two black eyes and a
bloodied lip. The culprit was never
caught.
Then, in an incident similar to the events that took Brendon
Glenn’s life, a transient went into the Cow’s End and demanded money from the
patrons. The owner, Clabe Hartley, asked
him to leave, and the fellow attacked Clabe, wrestled him to the floor and bit
off his finger tip.
In Brendon’s case, he was harassing Townhouse patrons and
passersby and the doorman tried to back him off. One report says he had earlier gone into the
bar to panhandle and been evicted by the doorman. Later Brendon picked a fight with the doorman,
which led to the police getting involved.
What’s the common denominator in
all these incidents? The instigator was a transient.
There is more to learn from all
of this.
Why are there so many homeless in Venice and what’s being done to help them get
off the street?
Well, the sunshine helps bring them here from all over the
nation. (That’s why many of us are here,
too.) Then there’s a slew of
short-sighted court decisions and legislation that makes it much easier to live
out in the open in California , and in Los Angeles in
particular. This is compounded by a
squishy, homeless-loving City Attorney, Mike Feuer, who had advised the LAPD to
not enforce the City’s “no camping, no camping equipment and no encampments”
rules (which are enforced in other city parks like the one next to City Hall).
Then there is the time honored tradition of giving complete responsibility
of any area in the City to the councilmember (in this instance Mike
Bonin). The result is that the Mayor and
City Council have washed their hands of any responsibility for Venice
despite it being a phenomenal tax generator for the City and the primary
park/beach destination in Los Angeles . For example, Griffith
Park has fewer visitors and yet gets
park rangers, but not Venice . A recent proposal by the Venice Neighborhood
Council to add a Rec. and Parks Department superintendent, accountable for management
of the Venice Beach Recreation Area, to the City budget was ignored by Mayor
Garcetti.
At the recent LAPD community listening session on the
shooting there were two notable absences: Mayor Garcetti and County Supervisor
Sheila Kuehl. Their absence is also reflected
in the dearth of City and County services.
Other than the $350,000 that the County gives to the St. Joseph Center annually
to focus on moving the 40 homeless most likely to die on Venice streets (or
parks) to housing and services, there is no County or City financial support to
provide any relief to the other 700 homeless folks living here (other than
meager general relief which some receive).
There are no counselors from the Los Angeles Homeless Services
Authority, who can arrange housing for our homeless. There is no funding for the Teen Project,
which must depend on donations. There is
no funding for People Helping the Homeless (PATH), which provided critical
services and housing to the homeless when Bill Rosendahl was councilman.
So, Venice
continues to be abandoned, with just a few LAPD officers to contain the
uncontainable. The situation reminds me
of Los Angeles ’
early years as a wild, ungoverned frontier outpost. And as everyone knows, people get harmed or killed
fairly easily in such an environment.
____________
Ryavec, a 29-year resident of Venice ,
is president of the Venice Stakeholders Association, which is suing the City
and County of Los Angeles
