Gustavo Arellano: An LAPD SWAT raid wrecked this man's print shop. He can't get compensation
LOS ANGELES — For 13 years, Carlos Pena has run NoHo Printing & Graphics in North Hollywood. He has stayed here even as this stretch of Lankershim Boulevard became sketchier, even as the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to lay off all his employees.
"It's a very creative field of work, but not very profitable," the Salvadoran immigrant told me half-jokingly as we walked inside his shop. "But it's mine."
What was once the showroom was now stripped down to nails, plywood and beams. Industrial-sized air conditioner units and fans sat where display cases and T-shirt racks once were, a reminder of the day last summer when Pena's life changed forever.
On Aug. 3 just after lunch, the 55-year-old was working on an order when he heard what sounded like a helicopter and someone on a megaphone.
