San Gabriel river bike path safety group

Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:11:44 -0800
To: "5th Dist. Gerrie Schipske" "Josh Butler, 5th dist."
From: Lakewood Accountability Action Group | LAAG
Subject: SG river issues “bike path safety group”
Cc: "Phil Hester, Dir Parks, Rec, and Marine", "LBPD" , (LA County Dept of Pub Works) "Diego Cadena, Dep. Dir." "Afshari, Shari, Div Head" , "Paul Maselbas, Principal Eng", "El-Rabaa, Maged, Program Dev.", "Yusuf, Abu, Cnty Bikeway Coord" (LA County 4th Dist) "Connie Sziebl, LB rep" , "Erin Stibal, Lkwd rep", "Carol Oberman, lkwd office" "Julie Moore, DPW coord" , "Capt. Dave L. Fender LA County Sheriff Dept", "Lt. Terry W. Benjestorf", "Andy Berg, LASD Lkwd Spokesman" "David N. Carmany, Seal Beach City Manager", "Lee Whittenberg, Seal beach", "Todd Rogers, Lkwd City Council"


Ms Schipske:

In regards to this article on your blog (below) please see attached agreements. If there are others that are not attached here (and that involve responsibility for law enforcement patrolling the SG river from South St. to the Ocean) consider this a public records request by LAAG to the City of Long Beach, LA County Dept of Public Works and LA County Sheriff's dept for copies of these additional agreements not attached herein.

If there is going to be a public meeting in Feb 2008 we would like to know the time and place so we can have someone attend to represent trail users (who quite frankly know where and what the problems are). I like to call these rivers "crime channels" or "vagrant rivers". We have already passed along some ideas we had on crime suppression in the river.

I also thought this letter below was rather timely. It was reported about a week after the bike jacking LAAG reported

http://www.presstelegram.com/ci_7618801
Monday's Letters
Article Launched: 12/02/2007 08:43:24 PM PST

Safety problem
How sad to report that Lakewood's sheriff's deputies do not care about our safety. For one month I have been trying to get them to clean out the riverbed located at Centralia and Bloomfield. The transients/felons have set up housekeeping in the holes in plain view of the street. They are drinking in public daily and more of them show up on a daily basis to start their own personal town.

Whenever I call the Lakewood Sheriff's Station I am either placed on hold until I go away, or after the tenth complaint was told that it was not their jurisdiction, but Cypress's. After contacting Cypress, they told me that without a doubt, it belongs to Lakewood.

Last night was the saddest night, as I had to tell them to please not dismiss my complaints, and disperse the dangerous element in the riverbed, because my brother was murdered in the riverbed 20 years ago. I can't wait to move out of Lakewood.

Lorene Diaz
Lakewood

Cleaning up the neighborhood and making it safe
Coyote Creek and other Bike Paths

21. December 2007 Uncategorized, Coyote Creek

Along the Coyote Creek, San Gabriel River and Los Angeles River are bike paths that go quite a distance up into Los Angeles County and down through Orange County to the ocean.

Because these bike paths go through several jurisdictions and also include the Flood Control Districts of both counties, there are many questions as to who is responsible for policing those areas ­ especially in light of bicyclists being mugged along the path.

I called a meeting of the local jurisdictions together that included: County of Los Angeles, Flood Control District, Cities of La Palma, Los Alamitos, Cypress, Seal Beach, Lakewood and Hawaiian Gardens (which did not attend). We also had representatives from Long Beach ­ Government Relations, Councilmember O’Donnell’s office and Police Department.

The focus of this “bike path safety group” is to determine how we can work together to keep the areas of the bike path and the neighborhoods adjacent free from crime and graffitti.

We will reconvene in February after all jurisdictions receive copies of the agreements for use of the bike paths which apparently were executed many years ago between the cities and the flood control district. Many cities were surprised to learn that the County did not have responsibility for policing the bike path and flood control areas.

This is a great chance to work together on a regional basis on a problem that is impacting many cities.


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