http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/02/us/skid-row-cop/index.html
Somebody else might walk by without looking at the painfully thin crackhead curled on the sidewalk in the fetal position. Or nudge her with a foot.
Not Deon Joseph.
This muscular black man with arms thick as hams leans over and gently shakes the woman's bony shoulder. He wants to make contact, ensure that she is still breathing.
"How you doing today?"
She curses him, still very much alive.
"Have a good day, ma'am," he replies, moving on down the line of dazed people and overstuffed shopping carts outside the Union Rescue Mission.
It's just another day in the life of a man shopkeepers and residents of the nation's last true Skid Row call the "Sheriff of Skidberry."
Joseph is senior lead officer for the Los Angeles Police Department, and Skid Row has been his beat for the past 17 years. He prefers foot patrol; it is more intimate. Despite the open drug dealing, piles of trash and omnipresent aroma of urine, feces and burning crack and weed, he has found a community here. These are his people.
Somebody else might walk by without looking at the painfully thin crackhead curled on the sidewalk in the fetal position. Or nudge her with a foot.
Not Deon Joseph.
This muscular black man with arms thick as hams leans over and gently shakes the woman's bony shoulder. He wants to make contact, ensure that she is still breathing.
"How you doing today?"
She curses him, still very much alive.
"Have a good day, ma'am," he replies, moving on down the line of dazed people and overstuffed shopping carts outside the Union Rescue Mission.
It's just another day in the life of a man shopkeepers and residents of the nation's last true Skid Row call the "Sheriff of Skidberry."
Joseph is senior lead officer for the Los Angeles Police Department, and Skid Row has been his beat for the past 17 years. He prefers foot patrol; it is more intimate. Despite the open drug dealing, piles of trash and omnipresent aroma of urine, feces and burning crack and weed, he has found a community here. These are his people.