West Los Angeles Community Police Advisory Board
A Partnership Between the Community and the LAPD

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C-PAB TRAFFIC COMMITTEE MINUTES

September 14, 2004
8:15am-10:00am
West L.A. Police Station
Roll Call Room

8:52 a.m. Meeting called to order by the Chair Robert A. Ringler. Robert thanks everyone for coming.

Introduction of Guests

Robert introduced Captain Vance Proctor who is the Commanding Officer of the station.
New members of the Committee introduced themselves.

Attendees

Robert A. Ringler, Chairman
Steve Twining, Roscomare, CPAB, Vice Chairman, Chair of the Handicap Placard Committee, Parliamentarian, Westside Neighborhood Council, Chair Traffic and Public Safety
Stan Arcader, Cheviot Hills HOA, CPAB
Sgt. Diana Armijo, LADOT, Parking Enforcement
Tony Barba, Fox Studios
Joanna Brody, Benedict Hills Estates
Amy Brothers, Overland Avenue
Pauline Chan, LADOT, Community Program Division, Senior Transportation Engineer
Sgt. Richard Harper, LAPD-West Traffic Div.-CTSU
Bette Harris, CPAB, Brentwood Community Council
Jeff Keeler, Quicksilver Tow, West LA OPG
Sgt. Craig Lally, West LA Community Police Station
Mel Leventhal, South Robertson Neighborhood Council
Anita Miller, Brentwood Park Property Owners Association
Larry Miller, Brentwood Park Property Owners Association
Tom Mitchell, CPAB member
Lan Nguyen, LADOT, Program manager, "Watch the Road"
Debbie Nussbaum, WHOPA
Patti Post, CPAB, Pacific Palisades Community Council
Capt. Vance Proctor, West LA Community Police Station
Alex Rodriguez, LAPD, West LA Community Police Station
Bill Schroeder, CPAB
Officer Chris Smythe, LAPD, West Traffic Division
Lore Stone, CPAB
April Vanoff, Holmby Hills Homeowners
Paul Verdon, Holby/Westwood OPA
Dmitry Vernik, CPAB

Approval of Minutes

Robert A. Ringler asked for corrections or additions to the August 10, 04 minutes. Samantha Greenberg and Peter Arnold have been added as an attendees to the August 10th minutes. Diana Armijo was listed incorrectly the correct designation after her name is LADOT Parking Enforcement. Steve Twining moved to have the minutes approved as amended. seconded the motion and the minutes were approved.

Commanding Officer Report

Captain West LA continues to lead the city in traffic citations for a city of our size. We have the least amount of personal in the city, yet we are number three in the city in writing traffic citations. We're up over 50% of last year. This is a result of the Neighborhood Councils giving us the Laser guns. We're grateful to our partners in West Traffic Division and to the four enforcement officers that we have assigned full time to work our problem locations. We're putting a lot of enforcement and it has had its affect by a 4% reduction in traffic collisions. We're the only area in West Bureau that is down on collisions. We did have a horrendous accident on La Cienega, it occurred at 3 in the morning by two cars, allegedly street racing, killed a pedestrian and two occupants of one of the vehicles. We try to balance our resources between traffic and crime and we are trying to bolster our Neighborhood Watch Program. In one community, individuals are writing down license plates of suspicious vehicles. This is helpful if a crime occurs in that area, we can go back and look at the license plate of the suspicious vehicles that were taken down earlier. It's difficult for us to rely on burglar alarms alone because sometimes within a one-day period there are 200 false alarms. So jotting down the license plates of suspicious vehicles is quite valuable to us. Since February crime has been going down in our division. We are at a 7.8% decrease in crime. asked what is considered a suspicious car. Captain Vance Proctor responded with most people enter an area and then leave, they don't loiter and they don't circle around the area, that vehicle could potentially be a suspicious vehicle, that is the type of vehicle you should be precautious about. Sometimes they park their cars a few blocks away from where they commit the crime. Stacy Antler asked about the impact of the federal ban on assault weapons expiring last night. The Captain responded with California still has a workable ban on assault weapons. Joanna Brody we've had a rash of burglaries in Deep Canyon. Since I do get the bulletins, I noticed that there are a lot of streets that I'm not familiar with, is it possible to add the zip codes or the nearest intersections so I know where the burglaries are taking place. One of the committee members suggested going to 'map quest'. The Captain said the website LAPD online might be able to pull up a map of the crimes but this is something they may be working on.

Guest Speaker

Lan Nguyen, Program Manager "Watch the Road Campaign, Operation Traffix" Lan is an engineer with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. With the groups represented here today you have the potential of reaching out to 300,000 residents. The time that I would like to spend today is establishing a relationship with you at the community level. Hopefully you will help me get the message out. Operation Traffix is an effort by the County wide agencies both public and private to try to make an impact to reduce the number of deaths and injuries due to traffic. Our hope is that the brand name "Watch the Road" can be disseminated throughout the County and more specifically to your local committees.

We're especially interested in flushing out the specific issues that are troubling or plaguing your particular community. What we don't have are the foot soldiers that know your communities than we do. Each community may have different needs and different ways of reaching out to their members. For some it may be a banner for others it may be a mailing list or newsletter so we would like to tailor this campaign to the needs of that specific community. I will be passing out my business card and a partnership form that I would like you to fill out and give back to me. We're asking help from community leaders like yourselves to try to get the message out and to provide us feedback so we can build a program together. We're at a stage where we can build pilot programs within communities and to see what works.

Our timeline is this, this summer we went out with 300 ads on LADOT buses, MTA buses as well as other municipal buses in LA County. This October 700 bus shelters and bus stops will have ads on them as well. So far with this program, most of the space has been donated, all we have to do is pay for the printing of the ads. These are slow steps considering how large the County is, but we would like to just take one step at a time and learn as we go.

Again, we really need your help in coming up with a plan tailored around your community. Once your community has identified a means of reaching its constituents we can help pay for banners, lawn signs, whatever seems to be the preferred way of communicating within that community. This would be in the form of a matching grant.

Robert asked Lan how do you develop a program in this area that is severely affected by people who don't live here and just commute through here with the primary problem being excessive speed. Robert went on to say that he thought Lan could reach out to the Neighborhood Councils and that some form of signage is maybe affective because a majority of people who drive here don't live here. Robert sees this effort to change behavior as something that's going in the right direction. Lan went on to provide the time table of their program, during the second week of November, there will be radio spots, emphasizing our message in the media. An example of how this program may work, may be a particular segment of the community puts up lawn signs on a designated corridor. Identifying the 'Watch the Road' message and then a week later is followed up by enforcement. This is one example of how this program may work.
mentioned the Brentwood Art Fair and suggested Lan present some info there as well as at "the Taste of Brentwood." Another idea is to have the police hand someone they have just given a traffic violation a 'Watch the Road' pamphlet. The California Highway Patrol is asking us to design a pamphlet that is the same size as the book they use to write traffic citations.

questioned the local usage of signs and banners and their duration. Lan mentioned the bus stops and shelter signs will be up for a month. The Lawn signs will be up as long as the community wants them. They shouldn't be up for a protracted period of time and they should be timed with enforcement; and then, on and off again. We don't want visual clutter. This program will last until December of 2005, eighteen months. There is also a evaluation program tied to this, to measure its effectiveness. Also, we're going to quantify the number of times people run stop signs and red lights.

Officer Chris Smythe from West Traffic Division, I met with Lan back in June regarding 'Watch the Road.' My question is I thought we were going to get something started on Palisades Drive. I recently got back from vacation and noticed when I was enforcing the speed laws up there; there were no 'Watch the Road' signs. Also, where in West Bureau would 'Watch the Road' be initiated. Where and when, could you contact West Traffic Division to let us know, so we could be involved. Lan commented that the representative from CD 11 and herself were on vacation. Now that we're back, I feel the best solution for this particular area, would be for the community to allow us to promote the campaign via their newsletter. Since, there is a definite problem in this area and it is not caused by commuter traffic our hope is that the President of the Homeowners Association of this area will agree with the data the has been presented to them; that indicates there is a problem in this area and that the 'Watch the Road' campaign is one way of addressing that problem.

had a problem with the lawn signs, there is a city ordinance regarding signs. Lan responded with those are some of the problems we are hoping to overcome. As the liaison of this project, I hope to convince the city agencies that enforce these laws to modify them for this program or we are prepared to go to the city council to modify the laws in order to accommodate our program. This surely can be done, by looking at it as a pilot project. Stan felt that the parkways would be the effective place to put these lawn signs.

Mel Leventhal has this project or something similar to it been done somewhere else, and if so how successful has it been? Lan responded by saying our program is based on a similar program that was started in the City of San Jose. The San Jose campaign was called 'Street Smarts,' they got the sponsorship of their sports teams, the area AAA, since they didn't have a strong monitoring component, so I don't have quantitative data on the effectiveness of their program. However, New Zealand has a program that started in 1995, where they did this very thing, a focused education and enforcement campaign. There was a 95% recognition of the program, through the enforcement program, speeds dropped 5 mph, and there was a reduction in accidents and fatalities. Paris, France had a similar program, yet was not as monitored.
Mel asked what about reaching out to non English speaking people. Lan said that currently the program is bilingual since, 44% of those living in Los Angeles are Hispanic/Latino, 30% are white, and the rest make up the diversity of Los Angeles. For now, only the two languages are being targeted.

asked about bumper stickers on Police Cars. Chief Bratton issued a memo, to this effect; I know the traffic officers have put them on their vehicles. Our hope is that both LAPD and LA County Sheriff will put bumper stickers on all their patrol cars. Our website is www.watchtheroad.org. Robert encouraged the Neighborhood Councils and Community Councils to get the word out to their members, and hopefully we can assist Lan in hoping to make Los Angeles County a safer place to drive.

Committee Reports

Volunteer Committee-Patti Post Patti reported there is nothing new to report. Robert wanted to convey to Patti a concern that Edie Lehrer had regarding setting up an account in PACT for the speed trailer. Patti will have to make a formal written request to PACT so a line item can be established for the volunteer committee's efforts in establishing financial resources for the deployment of the speed trailer and decoy car program.

Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) Report

Community Programs Division-Pauline Chan I just want to thank Lan for coming and I would like to reemphasize my pledge to help with this process. When I meet with the different neighborhoods there is such a desperate cry for any solution to deal with commuter problems. By the way this program does affect commuters because whatever we do in their community hopefully that will affect their behavior going through other communities.

I would like to follow up on an item that I brought up last time, about the speed hump program. We are working on some changes in the rules and to try to adjust to the budget levels that we have. We will revert back to a process that requires a petition before a substantial speed hump study is done. We're going back to a prioritization system; where we will not lower our thresholds but would prioritize all of the justified locations based on need.

Parking Enforcement Division-Sgt. Diana Armijo Nothing new to report.

Neighborhood/Community Council Reports

Pacific Palisades Community Council-Patti Post LADOT has declared that they want to cancel the commuter express line #430, that runs from the Palisades to Brentwood to the VA and then to downtown. There seems to be some opposition by the ridership, both Brentwood and Palisades Community Council have offered support to keep the line running. If anyone is interested please contact me.

Westside Neighborhood Council-Stacy Antler Chair of Traffic and Public Safety Committee We have finally approved the money for the laser gun. We're just waiting for the city to cut the check.

Discussion

Robert asked the committee for their approval in inviting Supervisor Zev A motion was made and seconded and the committee voted to give the chair approval to invite Zev to the December meeting.

Announcement of Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on October 12, 2004 here at West LA Police Department. Guest Speakers: Nancy Michali, Director of Metro Operations "Metro Connections" 'Improving Public Transit in the 21st Century in Los Angeles County.' And , Community Relations Manager of Metro Westside/Central Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, MTA. A motion was made to adjourn and seconded it was approved and the meeting ended at 10:08 am.