Video appears to show Burbank police dumping distressed homeless man in Los Angeles
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LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles’ City Council president is demanding an investigation after video appears to show police from neighboring Burbank dropping off a clearly distressed homeless man in front of his L.A. office and driving away.
The video was released by Council President Paul Krekorian on Friday, and Krekorian said it shows the officers leaving the “severely distressed unhoused man” and abandoning him on the sidewalk in North Hollywood.
In the video, after the officers take the shoeless man out of the back of the police vehicle, he falls to his hands and knees and puts his head on the sidewalk and police then drive away. The man is then seen in the video crawling on the sidewalk.
Krekorian said at a news conference Friday, where he played the security footage, that he was “extremely livid.”
He said there have long been suspicions that cities next to L.A. are “pushing their unhoused population into the city of Los Angeles,” rather than providing care themselves.
“The person fell to the sidewalk, clearly experiencing a mental health crisis as well as physical injuries,” Krekorian said. “And the officers of the Burbank Police Department got back in their vehicle and drove back to Burbank — without giving any aid to this person, without determining whether there was anyone who could provide services to this person.”
“They dumped him in North Hollywood,” Krekorian said.
Burbank is a separate city from Los Angeles, but is right next to and nearly surrounded by the city.
The Burbank Police Department said it responded to a call near a Burbank hospital about a naked man sitting at a bus stop at around 8:45 a.m., and that the man said he had left the hospital voluntarily before they arrived.
The department said the man asked to be taken to the North Hollywood metro station, and en route asked to be let out where he was dropped off so that he could get a cup of coffee.
“To gain cooperation for the individual to put on clothing, the officers offered to drive the individual to a place of his choosing,” police said in a statement. After the man asked to be let out, “the officers complied immediately with his request,” the department said.
Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank said in a statement that there was an incident Thursday morning on public property near the hospital, and that among the calls made to police was a hospital security guard “seeking help for a person on a city sidewalk who appeared to be in distress.”
Los Angeles has a homeless crisis it has long struggled to address, and which has been a focus of new Mayor Karen Bass. Los Angeles spends $1 billion a year trying to help its homeless population, Krekorian said, while neighboring cities do far less.
Burbank Mayor Nick Schultz said in a statement on X that “the City of Burbank takes the concerns raised by Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Krekorian seriously.”
The video was recorded Thursday morning, Krekorian said. It was captured on a security camera on the building where Krekorian’s council office is, and building management reached out to his office later that day, he said.
After his office became aware of the video Thursday, staffers drove around looking for the man and eventually found him and got him medical care through the Los Angeles Fire Department, Krekorian said.
Krekorian said the man told his staff he had sought medical attention for what he believed was a broken leg.
He said the man told his staff that he had recently become homeless outside of the city of Los Angeles.
An estimated 46,260 people are homeless in Los Angeles, according to the annual homeless count conducted last year. There were an estimated 75,518 homeless people in the city and Los Angeles County, according to that count.
Krekorian said he introduced a motion Friday calling on the Los Angeles city attorney, the Los Angeles County district attorney and the state attorney general to investigate. He also said he would be demanding of Burbank’s mayor an investigation and effort to “look to changes in policy that can be made to try to avoid this type of egregious situation.”
He called the actions in the video “callous, cruel, inhumane and also fundamentally irresponsible.”
“As a human being, I was outraged by it, and continue to be,” Krekorian said.
Krekorian said the officers responded to an extremely vulnerable person by “literally dumping him on a sidewalk to fend for himself.”
“It’s a disgrace,” he said.
Burbank police said they are conducting an investigation into the incident, including about the conduct of the officers involved.
“The Burbank Police Department remains committed to treating the unhoused community with compassion and respect, and thanks Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian for bringing this matter to our attention,” the police department said.
