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THE STATE OF THINGS - The L.A. City Council is delegitimizing itself and the rule of law, of course, with a big assist from DA Gascón. People congregated in cities for safety and economic opportunity. Our City Council purposely deconstructs historic social contracts like law and order in the name of equity, climate change, and criminal justice reform. These are a few reasons why families, individuals, and businesses continue their exodus out of L.A., the number one place to move from in the country in 2023. We are even ahead of San Francisco, which is hard to do.
Another way the City Council does its best to drive people out of L.A. is to deny that in the 500 square miles that is our city, that you need a car in most cases to deal with the necessities of life. The City Council and Mayor Bass do everything they can to make being in a car a taxing, stressful, and an expensive experience. They do this by converting three-lane boulevards into two-lane streets. They add bus lanes, which are empty 97% of the time, causing more traffic and wasted time. They change the timing of lights for maximum wait times and inconvenience. They limit parking spaces in new apartment buildings. They shamelessly applaud regressive higher gas taxes while being driven around on taxpayer's money.
As if it isn't hard enough to move around, already, our always-smiling Mayor Bass is endorsing closing the Wilshire Blvd. cut-through in MacArthur Park to reconnect the green space there. In another grift, $2.500,000 will be given to consultants who will miraculously derive the desired result and wholeheartedly endorse the idea. If implementation does arrive, it will make it harder for people to get downtown or back to the westside of L.A., all the while planning to limit traffic going into the nearby neighborhood and make life more miserable for people who need their car. Closing Wilshire Blvd in the park is a super-duper plan for creating needless congestion around the Westlake neighborhood where the park is situated. There is no viable option around MacArthur Park.
But the unreality of punishing drivers hardly compares to the human tragedy that drug dealers and junkies have taken over the park. So, adding approximately two more acres of green spaces from the boulevard shutdown will just be so much more accommodating to drug users. According to the L.A. Times, "MacArthur Park sits at the epicenter of Los Angeles' overdose epidemic. In 2022, there were 84 fentanyl deaths recorded in the 0.9 square mile ZIP code surrounding the park — more than any other ZIP in L.A. County."
City Council Member Eunisses Hernandez, like an over-permissive mother, is so concerned with the rampant drug use and fentanyl deaths in or around MacArthur Park that she's secured $3,000,000 to open a respite center that will provide sterile drug supplies and the overdose-reversing spray naloxone. A government endorsement for continued drug use if there ever was one. Residents want less crime and drug use in the park, not more green space for addicts.
The City Council is so tone-deaf regarding the 63% of Angelenos that use their car as their primary mode of transportation; they don't care how hard it is to transport groceries for four on a bus. How many supermarkets congregate around train stations? Not to mention the high likelihood of them getting stolen on public transport. They don't care if a single mom must struggle to get two kids to different schools and get to her job on time, and the only way to accomplish such a feat is with an automobile. This is impossible if jobs or schools are an unreasonable distance from the bus stop or a Metro station. How many old people can walk blocks from a bus or metro station to see their doctors? Can plumbers, gardeners, and Amazon delivery personnel get to where they're needed with all their supplies, make deliveries, and install water heaters and solar panels without a van? Bicycles are fun and economical if you don't have serious transportation needs.
This proves that City Council members have lost touch with their constituents and are ideologues for a net zero protocol that will impoverish all but the 1%. Reducing mobility also reduces economic opportunities. It also limits opportunities for recreation, education, and the chance to see relatives as often as you want. Exactly who is voting for that?
The latest outrage to common sense and the public good is that the City Council is considering taking the police's enforcement responsibility for minor traffic infractions away and giving it to a new unarmed division of the bureaucracy to take over most traffic duties. The Councilpersons have heard the complaints and are doing this in the name of "Equity." Translation: too many minority Angelenos are getting stopped for driving infractions, so we need to exclude them as they can’t be accountable for their actions.
A report compiled by California's Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board noted that Black Americans accounted for nearly 13% of all traffic stops in 2022, which is above their 5% share of the State's population. Traffic stops have declined dramatically year over year since 2019. In 2019, there were nearly 713,000 traffic stops. In 2022, 331,000 stops were made. Maybe this has something to do with the doubling of hit-and-run deaths from 2020 of 56 to 108 in 2023. Los Angeles has more car accidents than any other city in California, resulting in injuries or fatalities. So, let's give up on traffic enforcement and take more responsibility away from the police. What could go wrong?
Law enforcement officials have defended minor traffic infraction stops because they have led to significant drug, parole, and weapon violation arrests. It is also logical that being stopped by the police is a cautionary tale and helps change driving behavior for the better. Driving in L.A. due to negligible enforcement and a dearth of tickets given out, especially for speeding, running red lights, and reckless driving, has contributed to L.A. being the worst place to drive in the State.
The City Council thinks Metro's "brilliant safety" tactic of having unarmed ambassadors trying to deal with mentally ill people, drug addicts, and violent homeless people on buses and trains is a smashing success. So, the City Council is now about to ask the police to give up their job of enforcing traffic laws, which will further hinder the police's ability to protect the public. The Council intends to create a new group of non-armed employees and put them in harm's way. This tactic might work in a homogenous high-trust society like Japan, but in our uncivil society invites further scofflaws at best and, at worst, will encourage reckless drivers' worst instincts.
Athena Novack, the new president of the Homeowners of Encino (HOME), notes: A speeder is a speeder. When a person is involved in an accident by someone driving unsafely, the victims of an accident don't care where the driver lives, what ethnicity they are, or what kind of car they were driving. They wish it never happened. They wish corrective action would have occurred to ensure more safety, caution, and defensive driving so this event might have never happened.
Homeowners of Encino launched a new initiative called Unified Neighbors for Safe Streets. Our community members posted lawn signs asking speeding drivers to slow down on residential streets and obey Stop Signs. We did have a bit of success as some cars did respect this simple citizen plea. However, some drivers cutting through the Encino Hills are incredibly hostile. Drivers, even with small children in the car, have been observed getting out of their vehicles and mutilating or stealing the sign from front lawns.
HOME is taking the lead on street safety, as the Encino Neighborhood Council has ignored this issue. HOME is also consulting with the Council Office (CD4) and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to mitigate the high-sped cut-throughs in the Encino Hills area. Safer streets are something we can all unite on.
(Eliot Cohen has been on the Neighborhood Council, serves on the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and is on the Board of Homeowners of Encino and was the president of HOME for over seven years. Eliot retired after a 35-year career on Wall Street. Eliot is a critic of the stinking thinking of the bureaucrats and politicians that run the County, the State, and the City. Eliot and his wife divide their time between L.A. and Baja Norte, Mexico. [email protected].)
