Skid Rown at tipping point

Crime has reached a "tipping point" in downtown L.A.'s Skid Row and if conditions are going to improve, long-term housing needs to be provided to hundreds chronically homeless, LAPD Chief William Bratton said Thursday.

Since September 2006, when the Los Angeles Police Dephetment launched a controversial cleanup effort on Skid Row called Safer Cities, police say deaths there have dropped by half and crime last year dropped 20 percent. Rachel Uranga in the Daily News.

"I think we have reached a tipping point," he said during a short speech to about 100 academics, policymakers, service providers and police gathered for a Manhattan Institute forum on the LAPD's Safer Cities initiative downtown. "Now the challenge is for the rest of society to step up."