Los Angeles cracking down on illegal dumping

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- On a street corner in El Sereno, two men are caught on surveillance video dumping junk where they think no one can see them.

Similar incidents have occurred on Craig Doerr's cul de sac on Doran Street.

"Everything from mattresses to the kitchen sink, contractors would come down here illegally in the middle of the night and just dump whatever they had instead of having to pay to take it to the landfill," said Doerr, of South Coast Fibers.

Illegal dumping is a chronic problem in certain areas of Los Angeles, one that's garnered the attention of the Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer.

Feuer's office is putting together a multi-agency task force to target persistent trouble spots.

"Investigation, collaboration, prosecution as well as cleaning up are all parts of this," Feuer said.

Recently, waste from illegal dumping cost the city about $12 million to clean up. It's also ugly. Everything from construction debris to car parts can be found.

"The Bureau of Sanitation's call center received approximately 600,000 service requests in fiscal year 13-14 of which 65 percent of the requests involved illegal dumping." said Kevin James, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.

The task force will target nine different sites, which will remain secret. The objective is to send a message to offenders that keep coming back to certain spots where they think they won't get caught.

Doerr says signs, a camera and continually alerting street services when an illegal dumper leaves a mess made a big difference in his neighborhood.

"They got the message. The fact that so much work was put in by the city to keep this clean. I guess their conscience got the better of them and they quit coming," Doerr said.

Or maybe it was word that penalties for illegal dumping just went up. In two cases filed Thursday, the alleged offenders face a $1,000 fine and 6 months in jail for each count.