Are LA's homeless transients getting more aggressive?
CHATSWORTH, Calif. (FOX 11) - When you talk to people around Chatsworth you hear about how transients are becoming more aggressive.
How there are homeless who walk into stores and walk out with things they didn't buy. In some extreme cases store owners are made to feel terrorized.
A case in point. On Saturday, a flower shop owner - we'll just call her Diana - was working in her store when she heard noise at her front window. It was an aggressive woman believed to be a local homeless transient by the store owner. She took phone video of the woman who banged on and kicked the front door. She made comments that didn't make a lot of sense and threats against the store owner.
Diana says, "There was a girl outside and she was doing drugs against my building. She just got up and charged at me and my husband at the front door. I got it shut in time, but couldn't at the key in the door to shut it to lock it. She started spitting at the window and hitting the window. I was afraid she was going to break it."
Diana called police…she said they talked to the homeless woman, but let her go.
Not far away at Dorose Liquors #2, co owner Jay S. Grewal talked about his run-ins with aggressive homeless i the area and that same woman that harassed Diana Grewal told FOX 11 News, "I just told her I need you to leave…she said you can't kick me out I have money and this and that…no you have to leave Don't want your money." He escorted her out.
We reached out to Councilman Mitchell Englander who said: "No one in Los Angeles should have to deal with this kind of harassment in our neighborhoods and businesses. With homelessness reaching levels unprecedented in our lifetime, we need to address this crisis with the same urgency as if it were an earthquake or a hurricane."
He says he's directed law enforcement and sanitation resources to protect the quality of life in the district.
Diana, meanwhile, says she wishes the police would have taken some action against the woman. She said, "I would like some protection. I just feel like she had more rights with not giving her name or beating on a door - holding someone in a business…if I went out she would have spit and hit me."
Councilman Englander is looking into what happened.