A video released Friday by Los Angeles City Council Speaker Paul Krekorian shows a Burbank police officer releasing a shoeless homeless man from a Los Angeles sidewalk and then driving away in a car.
The roughly one-minute security camera video Thursday morning shows a patrol car marked “Burbank Police” pulling up to the curb in front of Krekorian’s district office on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood, less than two miles from the Burbank city line.
Two uniformed officers are seen helping the man out of the back seat of a patrol car, with one of the officers removing the handcuffs from the man’s wrists.
The barefoot man, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, limped out of the car, waving his arms around and rubbing his face before dropping to his hands and knees with his head pressed against the pavement and then lying on his stomach.
“I’m furious,” Krekorian told reporters in a video released at a news conference Friday, accusing officers of not helping the man and saying, “They left him in North Hollywood.”
A representative for the Burbank Police Department did not immediately comment.
Krekorian said staff found the man in the area Thursday afternoon and he is receiving medical treatment.
The man told Krekorian’s staff he had recently become homeless outside of Los Angeles. Krekorian said he had been hospitalized at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, but became “unmanageable,” so Burbank police responded to the hospital and eventually took him to North Hollywood.
When officers found the man Thursday afternoon, “he wasn’t in good condition,” Krekorian said. “He couldn’t walk. He was still in the neighborhood. We called the Los Angeles Fire Department.”
Burbank City Councilman Constantine Anthony said Friday that city officials are investigating the incident.
“I’m confident we can figure out what happened, why it happened and get things moving in the right direction,” he said.
When asked if he had any concerns about the video, Anthony said, “This man appears clearly distressed, but we don’t know what happened prior to this. We look forward to working with Council Speaker Krekorian’s office to find better ways to serve the needs of our homeless community going forward.”
Krekorian also filed a motion Friday asking City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto, Louisiana County District Attorney George Gascón and California State Attorney Rob Bonta to investigate the incident.
In 2018, then-Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino accused the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department of “abandoning” a homeless man in the San Pedro neighborhood after a video was released showing a man getting out of a deputy’s patrol vehicle after both the LAPD and Fire Department responded to calls about the man.
Sheriff’s office officials disputed Buscaino’s story and said deputies took him to the bus station in San Pedro at his request.
At a press conference Friday, Krekorian criticized Burbank and other cities, which he did not name, for not doing enough to combat homelessness, even as Los Angeles spends billions of dollars on the issue.
“We’re making extraordinary efforts, but many of our neighbors are not serving the homeless,” Krekorian said.
Times reporter David Zarnizer contributed to this report.