Aug 27, 2026
I joined the Pirate Wires team a couple weeks ago to cover LA local politics. Five days into my new job, I received a tip alleging that Skid Row puppies were dying by the litter — used to test fentanyl, left to ingest drugs lying around, or physically abused outright. Naturally, I hit up my colleague Hunter to investigate. I picked him up from the airport around 8:30am with 10% battery left in my Tesla, and then off we went to the armpit of America.
— Nicole
To brave Skid Row, we decided to volunteer with an organization called Starts With One Today. On Sundays, they offer donated clothes, food, and other resources to the homeless population there. They also run an animal rescue service, aiming to support Skid Row’s dogs.
Dogs on Skid Row have lately become a political lightning rod. Earlier this summer, former mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt alleged that rampant animal abuse was occurring in the area. At the time, an LAPD Lieutenant said the claim “[lacked] credible evidence,” and a former councilman accused Spencer of propagating a “dramatic fabrication.”
We wanted to find out for ourselves.
Spoiler alert: we found credible evidence galore, and an utter lack of dramatic fabrication.
Initially, we spent three hours passing out free clothes and blankets to children on the corner of 5th and Townes. While there, scene after scene revealed just how unhinged and anarchic this forgotten corner of Los Angeles really is. A few highlights:
A shirtless man dancing down Skid Row to rap music while dodging oncoming cars. He approached us, asked for water, and, upon being informed the water station was down the block, whipped out a tiny knife with a hot pink blade. “THIS MY KNIFE,” he exclaimed. “Cool knife,” we replied.
A pregnant mother trying to seal a $1,500 stroller from the nonprofit workers. A tug-of-war ensued, with homeless people jumping in to rip it away from the volunteers as the woman screamed that she needed it for her kids (whom she’d left in a hot car on a 100-degree day, per the charity head). Come to find out, she’d received another stroller just a week earlier; this one was reserved for a different mother with a 15-day-old preemie. We took turns holding the baby as the new mom dug through the toddler bin, waiting for the stroller. (Eventually, a smoking hot policewoman by the name of Officer Velazquez defused the situation.)
A white dude with weathered skin and wearing a black trench coat repeatedly trying to steal from the bags and carts of other homeless people. Upon getting caught, he’d shrug sheepishly before moving onto his next victim. The man sported a Rolex Oyster Perpetual 41 Blue (a $10,000 watch), which dangled loosely from his wrist. 100% chance he bought it from a store.
An old woman with pink hair (flanked by her much younger husband) saying, through a toothless smile, that she wanted to babysit our kids. Keep in mind, we are both in our early twenties, had given no indication of being parents (which we aren’t), and had given no indication of being in a relationship (which we aren’t). She then thanked us and the organization for everything they do, especially for that one time they picked up her dead chihuahua. You see, once, just to see what happened, her daughter threw a pizza between the chihuahua and the pink hair lady’s pitbull, which then proceeded to brutally maul the chihuahua.
A skid row resident named Shanekka — who recently (and now famously) alleged that she was paid to vote for Karen Bass in the LA Mayoral primary — asking for our help in finding donated clothes that would make her look “hot and sexy.”
A pristine Waymo humming past, like a relic from a lost first-world civilization.
Once the clothing handout wrapped, we joined volunteers who were distributing dog food and other pet supplies. Joey Tuccio — whom we recognized from social media — had just arrived.
Considerably jacked and relentlessly upbeat (qualities that stand out among this crowd), Joey has spent the last decade saving dogs from bad situations and routing all his work through Starts With One Today (which provides the dog food, care, and other essential resources). Three years ago, a call about an abused pitbull brought him to Skid Row, where he’s spent nearly every weekend since. Joey (as you’ll come to find out) knows the streets, the people, and the pets better than anyone else.
Trying to hold a conversation with Joey was basically impossible as Gotham City erupted around us. First, a loose puppy in a purple onesie came scurrying through. Then came a black Chihuahua with a swollen stomach. Its owner drove up in a wheelchair, ran the dog over with the wheelchair in front of the charity, handed off the dog, and left. Enter Marta, a toothless abuela who came to tell us about eight puppies who’d been born under her care; seven have died. She wanted Joey to take the last one because she didn’t want it anymore.
Joey, detecting our wide eyes, offered to finish the interview from the comfort of a car. Using his vehicle was off the table, as some of Skid Row’s most dangerous dealers have it out for him (he’s been chased multiple times, he told us — once at gunpoint).
So, the three of us caught a ride with his friend Jake DelFresco, a self-described former drug addict, fellow dog advocate, and owner of a car that conveniently has tinted and bulletproof windows. Jake pays a homeless man named Ray one egg sandwich per day to guard his car from break-ins. Apparently, hiring homeless men to fight off other homeless men is not uncommon here.
The drive was quite eventful.
Tents, graffiti, feces, and garbage lined each city block. If we had a nickel for every butt-naked person we encountered showering out of a fire hydrant, we’d have like four nickels! Open drug deals occurred right before our eyes. Fent folds everywhere. The only untouched part of Skid Row was the massive police station at its center.
“They’ve given me 50 parking tickets but won’t arrest the homeless guy shooting heroin in front of my car,” Joey sighed.
We stopped to speak to a woman named Traci, her male friend (we didn’t get his name), and her male friend’s dog named Bitch.
Between drags of a cigarette, Traci told us that she is 54, seven months pregnant, and really likes her drugs. She also shared that her dog (not pictured) frequently gets into her stash and that she has administered Narcan to it “so many times that the dog likes the taste of it.”
Her male friend, also in his fifties, has been living with two broken legs for five years, one so badly damaged the bone appeared completely detached from his foot.
After playing with Bitch for a while and giving her some water, Traci’s friend rode off on his bicycle, with Bitch perched in a wheelchair strapped to the side like a makeshift sidecar.
We thought it was sort of endearing. Joey did not.
With both of the man’s legs badly injured, he pointed out, who’s going to chase after Bitch if she bolts? If the wheelchair comes loose, who’s going to stop her from rolling straight into traffic?
“She’s bound to get killed soon,” he said.
We asked Joey to ballpark how many people on Skid Row owned at least one dog.
“Thirty to forty percent,” he said.
And how common, really, is the abuse?
“We’ve rescued dogs that have had their eyes and privates glued shut; we have rescued dogs that were raped; dogs that have had their legs purposefully broken; dogs with their legs falling off; everything under the sun,” he told us. “Skid row is lawless. There are no rules. People get killed all the time, animals get killed all the time. It’s crazy.”
There’s also Skid Row’s “dog-trading economy,” where puppies are illegally bred, traded, and sold either to other Skid Rowians or taken to places like Venice and Hollywood to sell to normies. “People are selling their puppies all the time. $100, $20. Sometimes people think they get $5,000,” Joey told us.
Charlotte, a Skid Row resident we met, often works with Joey to identify illegal breeders. She told us about a litter of six-week-old Cane Corso puppies that the breeder was hoping to sell for $500 a pop. Later, she sent us a video of one of the puppies that had been purchased by a woman on Skid Row. It was shivering violently.
We made six more stops on the Tour de Skid.
First, to see a litter of puppies. Their homeless owner said she hides the pups inside a cardboard box because she’s afraid they’ll be stolen; she refuses to name them because she intends to sell them as soon as possible.
Then, we stopped to see a French bulldog, whose owner Gabriel said he planned to breed her “eventually.”
“Everyone breeds [their dogs] too soon, but I was actually trying to wait until she’s like four years old,” Gabriel told us. It seemed like he genuinely cared about her well-being.
A minute later, we parked near a brown mutt, whose owner aggressively shoved the dog just before seeing us. As we approached, he hid his crack pipe between his legs. Joey refused to get out of the car for this one, telling us to deliver the goods ourselves (quickly), leave our cameras behind, and under no circumstances make conversation. We gave the dog some food and left.
A block further, we stopped at a pitbull lying underneath a parked car. Joey told us the people on the adjacent corner had already bred the dog twice.
Another volunteer team, which had been trailing us while handing out food, stopped at the corner where we were parked. At one point, one of the volunteers walked up to us and warned Joey that one of the nearby breeders was pissed.
The man, apparently, was complaining about some “influencer” who was “putting people on blast” and “creating issues.”
“Yeah that was me,” Joey said. “Don’t breed your fucking dog and get a fucking job, bitch.”
Finally, we stopped at a pug sitting inside a green painter’s bucket. When his owner lifted him out, we realized one of his hind legs was bent at an abrupt right angle — the result of being hit by a car and the injury never healing properly.
With water and ice to spare, we decided to visit what Jake called “the family section,” an orderly and especially dystopian stretch of white RVs lining both sides of the street, home to the parents and children of Skid Row. We parked the car, opened the trunk, and, within seconds, were met by roughly 25 kids under age 12, some barefoot (there are an obscene amount of dirty needles on the ground in Skid Row), hands open for water, crowding the car.
One barefoot mother approached us holding her three-year-old daughter named Kimberly and asked for a case of water. We obliged and carried one to her RV to find the pavement around her motorhome soaked in urine. We realized there, and Joey confirmed: none of these RVs had basic utilities, running water, or working bathrooms.
Walking back to the car, a police officer drove past and rolled down her window to thank us for our service. “We really appreciate all you do,” she added.
Wish we could say the same!
At this point, the severity of the situation had really set in. Where are Mayor Bass and the city councilmembers? Do they even care? What are they doing to improve the Skid Row situation?
According to Joey: they couldn’t care less.
Regarding Mayor Bass, Joey said that Skid Row’s animal rights activists have repeatedly tried to get her to take the issue seriously, with no luck. Joey acknowledged that Bass’ administration (this month) established a permanent partnership between LA Animal Services and the LAPD to train officers to investigate animal cruelty on Skid Row. But, in his view, he expects the initiative to be more for show than substance. He is waiting to see tangible results.
As for Nithya Raman, Joey told us “she actually came to my house last week for a private 90-minute meeting. It was very disappointing.”
“She admitted she doesn’t know anything about Skid Row,” Joey scoffed. “I’m so fortunate and happy that she’s not [in charge of] the homelessness community [anymore].”
Earlier this month, Pirate Wires wrote a review of Raman’s track record as LA’s homelessness czar. It wasn’t pretty.
Joey showed us a clip of him speaking to Raman, in which he explained the horrible conditions of mutilation and abuse the skid row dogs had experienced. She said that she was trying to learn more about the situation, which Joey found… unsatisfying.
Joey’s frustration extends also to Ysabel Jurado, the DSA councilmember representing Skid Row and recently appointed to the new Homelessness and Health Committee.
Joey said Ysabel was initially enthusiastic about saving dogs while running for City Council, messaging him back and forth on Instagram. Once elected, “she went completely silent,” he said.
“I love that she’s going to be the chair of the homelessness committee because it will show people in every district… what we’ve been dealing with on Skid Row,” he added.
After the family section visit, we passed by the Weingart Center, one of the neighborhood’s largest permanent and interim housing service providers, funded by ~$90m in government grants and philanthropy. There, a man, with his pubes out, jumped into the backseat with a baby kitten (named Tiger) that he’d accidentally stepped on. He said she’s usually “energetic” but wasn’t moving much since the incident.
Anyway, reviewers have described Weingart in grim terms:
“All you have to do is stand outside the Weingart and ask someone a few questions,” Joey told us, “and they’ll be like, ‘Can you please get me out of here?’”
He recalled one resident with a dog who called him from inside and said, “I am safer on the streets than in Weingart.”
Joey then brought up a dog named Nitro, whose owner, Khalil, lived in Weingart. According to Joey, Nitro was near death, unable to eat or drink because of a growth in his mouth.
Khalil pleaded with the facility to help.
Despite advertising that it assists with veterinary care, Weingart ultimately provided none, according to Khalil. In an email to Mayor Karen Bass after the fact, Kahlil wrote that Nitro “became critically ill” while he was staying there and, on the night the dog was dying, he “received no assistance with transportation to an emergency veterinary hospital,” per a screenshot of the email seen by Pirate Wires.
“Nitro passed away as a result,” he wrote.
At the end of our tour, we circled the Skid Row Care Campus, a 16-month-old county facility which describes itself (among other things) as a “Harm Reduction Health Hub” and operates a “syringe-exchange program” (give me your dirty needles, I’ll give you clean ones).
This place, with its cheery orange and blue facade, had evidently become a primary haunt for Skid Row’s worst drug dealers and their addicted buyers. Despite the nearby police stronghold — Skid Row is home to the Central Community Police Station police station, which spans 65,000-square-feet — and countless caseworkers inside, nobody seemed especially interested in stopping the drug-dealing and drug-use that we literally saw occurring right outside the door. Apparently, violence in the immediate vicinity of the care campus has skyrocketed, with homicides up 300% year over year since its founding.
(When asked for comment, Skid Row Care Campus sent this statement: “While we cannot speak to alleged claims about the Campus, we can confirm that every day, campus staff care for thousands of vulnerable LA County residents, many with untreated illnesses.”)
As we neared the end of our tour, Jake pulled his car to a stop and explained the government rationale that underpins this whole operation. The LA government had long believed that allowing drugs, crime, and homelessness to fester in skid row — creating what is, in effect, a “lawless city” — would contain the problem, and therefore spare the rest of the city. Instead, Skid Row has become a home base for drug, crime, and homelessness crises that Jake says have branched out across all parts of Los Angeles.
“Now we have this billion dollar epicenter that is a disaster, a waste of money, and is not even keeping [the problems] contained,” he said. “So none of that is working.”
Mayor Bass’ office did not reply to a request for comment.
— Nicole Wizman and Hunter Ryerson
as city council homelessness chair, raman greenlit hundreds of millions of dollars for programs she *knew* had issues, failed to catch rampant waste, and watched homelessness rise
nyc, la, dc, and seattle are all falling to so-called 'sewer socialism' as the barista class increasingly takes over the soul of the democratic party
if angelenos have any survival instinct left, they'll elect the only candidate capable of restoring our belief in reality