LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton says he will stop sending his officers to roust those sleeping on skid row sidewalks, at least for now.
The city and the American Civil Liberties Union plan to meet next with a federal mediator over a lawsuit on sidewalk sleeping. The talks will seek a compromise between the two factions, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
The court-ordered, closed-door session is designed to hammer out a compromise between the city and the ACLU, which filed suit three years ago to prevent the LAPD from arresting homeless people for merely setting up camp on city sidewalks.
In April, a federal appeals court ruled in the ACLU's favor, creating static among city leaders on an issue that they had vowed to tackle with a united front, the Times said.
When Bratton took the chief's job four years ago, he promised that he would clean up the streets using the same "broken windows" policing style he successfully employed to clean up Times Square in New York in the early 1990s.
Reducing downtown street crime is seen as an important ingredient in the gentrification of downtown.
