There was a community walk/ patrol through the MacArthur Park Neighborhood on Friday. Here's what we noticed. There was some suspicious activity. The most was a van with plates from Toyota of Huntington Beach hanging out in the lot of Cherry Donuts for over two hours. They appeared to be handing things off in small plastic bags to other cars. There were two passengers. A hale Hispanic driver and a female Hispanic passenger wearing a white hood. The van had a tan stripe along the center and Toyota of Huntington Beach Plates. There was a stocky male Hispanic in orange who seemed to be keeping watch. This is an issue because the van was seen at LB Ice a day later. If you see this van in the neighborhood, keep a close eye on it. The rest of the results are on the graphic above. Everything that Go Long Beach could handle was reported. There aren't enough details for the other suspicious activity to do anything other than keep an eye on those areas.
This map matches what I saw on Tuesday. Downtown is where things are most concentrated right now and most of the activity there appears to be trending East. There was a community walk. patrol tonight. Here's the path we took and what we noticed.
Here are the crime trends for this week in the MacArthur Park Neighborhood. The map is almost empty this week. There was property crime that trends towards some auto thefts, that trend North East towards 17th and Orange. Be careful at the south end of Orange and Anaheim, the property crime is in the same place as an encampment that was just removed. In Cambodia Town East, there were also some property crime along St Louis and 11th that trend up towards St Louis and Anaheim where some assaults took place. The car thefts around Rotary Centennial Park appear to be heading away from the neighborhood this week.
There is a ton of tagging and dumping in an alley that spans Gaviota to Rose. The alley is just behind Anaheim. As part of our Neighborhood Expansion program this week we clean half of that alley and reported all the tagging for clean up. We also did a Go Long Beach Run through our own neighborhood and the AOC7. The AOC7 has a clean up next week.
The map now shows where the dumped items are, so if the city doesn't pick it up before the clean up, AOC7 can just hand that map to Public Works.
There have not been shootings since the last round. However, the one that took place in North Long Beach at Artesia and Butler, now has identified the victim. Authorities Tuesday identified a man killed in a possible gang-related shooting in Long Beach that also left another man wounded. The shooting occurred about 3 p.m. Thursday near Butler Avenue and Artesia Boulevard, said Long Beach police Sgt. Brad Johnson. Tyrone Douglas, 19, of Long Beach died at a hospital, said coroner’s Assistant Chief Ed Winter. We are trying to identify victims, to prevent any shootings in Central Long Beach from being statistics as opposed to names/ real people.
Tonight the Wrigley Association hosted a forum between all six District Six City Council Candidates. Unlike the last write up, here I'm simply going share what each said about themselves that stood out in a brief paragraph. The forum was attended by about thirty to forty people. Questions were chosen by the association and by the audience for specific candidates.
Josephine A Villaseñor hails from Whittier. She became involved in the community after forming the Wrigley Community Watch. Villaseñor who has her BA in business management with an emphasis in Early Childhood Development. She is also a member of the Community Emergency Response Team, a Red Cross Volunteer and a fund raising event coordinator chief for the VIDC at the Veteran's Hospital. When asked how to bring life back into the sixth district, Viillaseñor said her top three goals would be addressing homelessness, public safety and lessening restrictive business environment. For instance, in Signal Hill where license fees are $55 instead of the $400 they are in Long Beach. She also stated if we expected businesses to support our community, our community needs to shop locally and support out businesses. When asked how she'd get along with other members on City Council, Villaseñor replied when I patrol, I patrol Districts 1,2 ,3, 4, 7 and six. I don't see borders, I just see a community.
Erik Miller who asserted the sixth district had not changed since he grew up at 14th and Walnut across from Anioch Church. Miller, who left the neighborhood to get his degree in architecture, would later return to the Wrigley Community. There he became involved in the Gang Reduction Intervention Task Force and Operation Jump Start. He also helped fund the PEACE Basket Ball League. When asked which of Dee Andrew's votes he disagreed with, Erik cited the cutting of funding to Long Beach Police. In order to restore funding, Miller supports the Mayor's one percent sales tax increase. At the forum, if he won the April 12th Primary would first sell that sales tax increase to the public.
Robert Harmon. grew up in Seal Beach. He didn't go to college, he went to war. He's a veteran of Desert Storm who started the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Association. Harmon, who credits himself with driving the gangs out of MacArthur Park, said that to raise funds for police, safety and infrastructure we would need to take a hard look at the city's financial choices. In he end, he called the one percent a bitter pill. Harmon cites deferred maintenance in the district as the reason sand stated we would either pay for it now or pay a lot more later. Harmon, who attended every meeting of the Anaheim Corridor Re-Visioning, had submitted his own Cambodia Town Beatification Project, to several neighborhood stakeholders and stated it could be applied to every Long Beach corridor.
Dee Andrews is a 69 year resident of Central Long Beach. He is the incumbent City Council member in District Six. He has termed out, however the City Charter allows him to seek a third term as a write in candidate. Much of the time Andrews was responding to criticism. Several challengers cited a lack of change in his district during Andrew's tenure. Andrews called this a weak argument that "Ray Charles could see through." When asked why he should be re-elected Andrews stated he had just gotten the ball rolling and would like to be there when his plans and projects come to fruition. According to Andrews one of the reasons for the budget short fall in past years was an over reliance on income from oil companies. And because of this, some hard choices had to be made. Without cutting 200 jobs in public safety we might have had to cut 700 jobs that were tied back to the infrastructure.
The Primary Election will be held on April 12th, 2016. You can register to vote withe the City Clerk's office. You can also vote early by mail or in person at the City Clerk's Office. We're still going to cover the race for the LBUD board and the board of college trustees. And there will be a Go Long Beach Run soon. But spoiler alert: Jessica Alvarez, gets our support for LBUSD School Board due to her involvement with bringing Safe Passage to the Westside. We'd like to see it expanded to Franklin and Washington Middle Schools ASAP. That would have a huge impact on safety here in Long Beach, and it would do so very quickly.
Disclaimer: So, first I apologize for how long it's taken to get this up, The Crime Reports
Website was down for much of January. I did talk to the director of
Media Relations at a public safety meeting and tell our neighborhood
resource officer, they weren't aware it wasn't updating. Just a reminder
these are trends, and the presence of crime in one area in the past
doesn't guarantee it will reappear in that area in the future.
The two obvious patterns are there are some thefts trending south east along 17th Street. Outside of the neighborhood there crime is trending east along 10th and away from the place where the homicide occurred last Sunday. There have been two homicides in Central Long Beach and three in Long Beach over the last week, and three in Long Beach all together. Both homicides in our area were on Sunday in the early morning hours after 2am. Of the incidents you see on both maps, a lot was happening on Friday, March 4th. If you hear gun shots, never assume they're fireworks. Always call them in.
- On Sunday February 28, 2016, at approximately 3:24 a.m., Long Beach
Police were dispatched to assist the Long Beach Fire Department in the
1000 block of Norman Court on a call of a dead body. I still can't find a name for the victim.
- A possibly gang-related shooting in North Long Beach Thursday afternoon left one man dead and another with
non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said. Officers responded to Artesia Boulevard and Butler. The deceased has not been identified.
- On Sunday March 6th, 2016 at about 2:44 a.m. LBPD found a man (adult) with an apparent
gunshot injury in a vehicle a few blocks south and east in the 1700
block of Pacific Ave. The victim has been identified as Ryan Davone Martin, 23, of Long Beach.
There is a trend of thefts and thefts from cars moving from Rotary Centennial Park towards the neighborhood. But the pattern is somewhat weak. There is also a trend of thefts moving away from a meth arrest right outside the neighborhood towards the Poly Neighborhood. Based on these patterns, keep an eye on Junipero, along the east side of our neighborhood. Also keep an eye on 10th Street and Poly High School.
There are a lot of dumped items in the neighborhood and along PCH, in most alleys.
Also based on a patrol along PCH to Magnolia, Magnolia to Hill, Hill to Pacific and Pacific to PCH and PCH back home, we would have had to stop every ten seconds to report everything we saw., I'm going to do a Go Long Beach Run early tomorrow to get at the dumped items. Remember, if you see something say something. Three fatal shootings in one week is three too many. And the gangs do not own this city, be strong and take it back.
Also, we still have two clubs for a car to give to anyone willing to take the pledge to keep their neighborhood clean.
