The LBPD held its West Division Leadership Forum yesterday. The topic was primarily auto theft. Auto theft is on the rise. In order to combat it, police recommend a common sense approach to keeping your belongings safe. Keep your car locked, windows rolled up and valuables out of site. The Long Beach PD also recommended that you think carefully about how you define valuables. For someone who is down and out, who sees a car with a window rolled down and a few dimes in the cup holder, that may be enough to spark a crime of opportunity. For more detailed information on keeping your car safe, please read this blog entry.
The second lecture was about the mobile apps the police use in crime and crime prevention. Go LBPD, provides "one stop shopping"
access to The Long Beach Police Department - information relating to
news, crime prevention, alerts, events, videos, and photos, through
social media feeds such as Nixle, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and
Flickr, along with the ability to submit crime tips, all with the tap of
a finger.
The Go Long Beach PH is part of a slew of apps Long Beach Residents can use to work towards a safer, cleaner city. Those other apps include Go Long Beach, Nixle, iWatch, Pulse Point and Crime Reports.
There was also a presentation by the police volunteer unit, a West Division Crime Statistician and a lot of success stories. One success story was of the nosy neighbor who stops a burglary in progress by recognizing what's out of place for her Wrigley Neighborhood. Six District resident Josephine Villasenor also chimed in with a success story where a homeless encampment reported that was selling drugs to minors was closed down within hours of sending in the photos to the LBPD. The LBPD also generously gave out clubs for car steering wheels. We will be giving those away, but only to someone who takes the Neighborhood Pledge to keep their neighborhood clean and safe. The next West Division Leadership forum will take place n two months at St. Luke's Church. The topic will be gangs. Neighborhood Expansion: Early Crime Trends for the 6th District. Wrigley. 20th to 21st on Cedar and Chestnut: Theft/ Property Crime.
Property crime often precedes something worse. Pacific and Willow.
Assault/ Theft. Washington Neighborhood: Auto Theft: Auto theft. Pacific
and 16th. MacArthur Park Neighborhood: Auto thefts on PCH from Cherry
to MLK. Also violent crime matches up with earlier trends on Junipero
and Spaulding.
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Tonight we attended the West Division Leadership Forum. The topic was auto theft. LBPD is giving away the club for the wheel. Both the MacArthur Park Community Association & the Wrigley Community Neighborhood Group will be giving away one of the two you see in the picture soon. Not sure how yet, but I am leaning to giving it to someone willing to take the pledge to keep the neighborhood safe and clean.
Please join Commander Robert Smith and his staff for this informative meeting on Wednesday February 24, 2016 at 6:00pm. at 1129 Alamitos. We will be having an Auto Theft Detective give a presentation as well as Administrator Karen Owens will be giving a presentation on the Community Engagement Division.
There are two major kinds of Human Trafficking. One focuses on sex, the other on slave labor. This month's West Division Leadership Forum, a bi-monthly meeting on community safety focused on this topic. The West Division Leadership Forum is a bi-monthly forum, held on the third Wednesday of the month. The current meeting place for the forum is Grant AME Church at 1129 Alamitos Ave, in Long Beach. The next meeting should be December 20th, 2015.
This is the delayed write up. Because this is a serious topic, I want to do it some justice. We are talking about a form of slavery here. Because of the seriousness of the topic, I am leaving the other topic of Code Enforcement for another day.
The pimps are revered by boys who hope to growup with their status
The concept of human trafficking reflects a shift in police tactics. In earlier days, law enforcement saw the prostitute as the prime target. Once arrested, police didn't talk to the prostitute and the prostitute didn't talk to the police. These days, the focus has shifted to the pimp. Human trafficking, which is now a felony, has brought much of the focus away from the women bought and sold like commodities, who in many cases are victims of severe emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
Many of the pimps subjects will be manipulated through fear, abuse and intimidation.
Human trafficking victims have been as young as five years old.There have been more than 27 million victims, 800,000 a year, 244,000 in America and 3000 in LA County alone. The industry itself is a $32 billion industry, with one girl often bringing in $500 a day. In many cases the victims are homeless, emotionally traumatized or mentally ill. They may also rely on drugs, alcohol or lack the ability to meet their own basic needs.
In that sense, human trafficking is a kind of kidnapping based on mental and emotional abuse and manipulation.
Sex and labor traffickers may find their victims at clubs, on the street, group homes, through mutual friends, malls and after school programs, Within our neighborhoods also be careful of traveling food carts, especially in the downtown and Central Long Beach Neighborhoods.
Often the pimps send other girls into these areas like homeless shelters to recruit for them.And sexual slavery does not just target the poor,but can also affect those who dwell in upper class families where rape may be used as a tool of coercion and blackmail.Pimps have also employed social media as a recruiting tool. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Moco Space, the latter is a gaming community I had never heard of until the meeting, have all bean used to lure in new girls.
To help keep their children safe, parents should always discuss how to stay safe online. And they should recognize the warning signs when their children might have taken online conversations too far. The relationship the pimp creates is based on controlling everything. The pimp decides on where the women he is trafficking can be. They may need his permission to shower or even sleep. In some cases the pimp may threaten not only the girl herself but her entire family.In many cases the trafficker will force their victims to call him "Daddy," the deepen his control.
Many girls find themselves branded, isolated and trapped. They are prevented from having conversations with anyone, with their pimp handling all communication with any potential John or Jane.
There are warning signs someone may be headed towards a life human trafficking.
The warning signs include:
Unexpected truancy
Signs of physical abuse
Chronically running away
Unusual promiscuous behavior
Withdrawn/ depression and fear
Inappropriate behavior with other people
Sudden possession of expensive Jewelry and clothing
If you see these signs in your children, friends or peers be aware what they may mean.
Those who would like to help protect Long Beach from human trafficking are asked to stay educated on the subject and help educate others. This involves not only getting churches and community organizations involved, but working with those community organizations already dealing with the issue like the Saving Innocence Project. It involves teaching potential victims, to walk in pairs, to walk with self confidence and purpose as well as chose your friends wisely. And it involves showing empathy to the people you see on the street. Human traffickers rely on anabsence of empathy to create victims. Also, when you do see something out of place, say something thatmay lead to help.
The West Division Leadership Forum is a bimonthly meeting for West Division residents of Long Beach. Each meeting centers on a different law-enforcement related topic. Because tonight's topic was gangs, it was rather well attended by around 100 or so West Division residents.
No gang name will be given any publicity here as I write up this meeting, which will be a general policy for this site.
The early part of the meeting centered on sharing with residents their resources for long term problem solving. Within West Division that is one of four resource officers that can be contacted through LBPDWest@LongBeach.Gov. The resident can use 911 or the police non emergency number, (562) 435-6711, to address the immediate problem. Then, if it's on going, they can ask their resource officer to address the core problem. Each resource officer is assigned to a different part of West Division, which encompasses Cherry to the end of Long Beach and the 405 to the beach.
The first speaker, Chris Rowe, was from the Fire Department and talked about grants through Homeland Security and CERT. Because I graduated from CERT, and am very familiar with the program, and I will write about that program at a later date. But very briefly CERT trains you in volunteer support for the Fire Department when major emergencies overwhelm their resources. The majority of the meeting centered on gangs. Detective Hector Gutierrez of the GVC Department spoke about Long Beach gangs. Gutierrez didn't address the crowd for very long before opening up the meeting to questions. The first question was if there had been an increase in gang activity since the Early Release Program. Gutierrez did answer that question yes, but added the way gangs operate has changed significantly. In the past you could identify gangs by the colors they wore and signs they held up. Today most gang members try much harder to blend in. While they are still committing crimes, the underlying motive is money more often than violence. This keeps today's gangs active in drug sales, breaking and entering and newer crimes like identity theft.
Overall crime is down in the city/ state despite June trends
When asked how to stay safe, the officers reminded up because most of these gangs are into crimes of opportunity. Thus, the way to stay safe is to take their opportunities away. For instance, talking on your cell phone while walking down the street prevents you from paying attention to your surroundings, so wait until you get home to dial. Other suggestions like lock doors, keep valuables out of sight and let people know where you are were mostly common sense. Gutierrez estimates that Long Beach has 5,000 active gang members, and that accounts for about one percent of the population. However, be aware that number does not account for those gang members smart enough to keep their identity a secret or the fact that the concentration of gang members west of Cherry is probably somewhat higher than to the east of Cherry.
Many of the questions tonight centered on tagging and how it seemingly can go back up so quickly after its taken down. That question was never really ever answered. Another question asked was what is the practical purpose behind tagging in the first place. That was answered rather directly: to identify the gang's area, intimidate residents and warn other gang members to stay away.
Lt. Mike Lewis did give a brief introduction to the Go Long Beach App, for residents who want to take that tagging down. Go Long Beach gives residents the opportunity to access City Hall, 24-hours a day
from anywhere. It allows residents to quickly submit service requests for
issues such as graffiti, potholes, illegal dumping, sidewalk repair and sign damage. You do not need to own or even live near the graffiti you report for it to be taken down; and removal is usually within 24-hours.Illegal dumping, while it will be addressed, is addressed in a much slower manner. A good question was asked what gang intervention programs were being implemented. One very good example of an intervention program, Safe Passage, was used as an example of an intervention program being developed on Long Beach's West Side neighborhoods. The program is based on a Bay Area organization that uses volunteers to provide a safe route for
children and youth as they walk home from school in San Francisco’s
notorious Tenderloin neighborhood. Now, residents of the Santa Fe Corridor are creating a similar program, partially in response to stabbing of Keyshawn Brooks, a former Cabrillo student killed while walking home from school in March. The program will use volunteers, businesses and other stake holders to help provide West Side students with a safe passage home from school, in hopes that events like the Brooks' murder do not repeat again.
Just throwing this out there: it sounds like a great idea for the Anaheim Corridor as well.
Today there was an hour and a half leadership forum. About fifty West Division residents, business owners and government officials were in attendance. The attendance was somewhat less than the last Leadership Forum. The forum focused on Long Beach's homeless population. There were three guest speakers from the Multi-Service Center, from Health and Human Services and from the Quality of Life Division of the Long Beach Police. Part of the meeting involved explaining the bi-annual census numbers, which Long Beach is required to collect to receive federal funding related to the homeless population. Those numbers show an 18% decrease in the homeless population between 2013 and 2015. There was also a 42% decrease in the population of homeless vets. This compares to a 12 percent increase in the homeless population in LA.
Disparities between what looks like an increase in the homeless population and the census numbers may be because the city recently cleared the homeless population out of the LA River and the beaches. This pushed a lot of Long Beach's homeless population back into some of the poorer neighborhoods.
Part of the reason for this is Mayor Robert Garcia's direct challenge to put an end to all homeless vets. Another may be the existence of new programs such as VASH: a kind of Section 8 for homeless vets. The Quality of Live division of the LBPD is a proactive policing unit that tries to coordinate resources for Long Beach residents who find themselves on the street. The unit works closely with the Multi Service Center and the Department of Health and Human Resources.
At the Quality of Life division, we have a goal of no homeless children in Long Beach
The Quality of Life Division has a wide range of responsibilities that have ranged from helping twenty-year homeless vets find housing to helping homeless people reunite with family. A repeating theme was that no matter how many resources are available, it's very difficult to help anyone who doesn't want help, and that often times, out reach can take years before the homeless person is ready to leave the street. Two other often repeated is that being homeless in itself it isn't a crime.
Usually, when the Quality of Life Division does do out reach they will target specific areas of Long Beach. One day, they may target the parks; another day they may target businesses and on another the beaches. They also stated, they will go out of their way to make sure every child in Long Beach has a home.
Something, that was somewhat counter intuitive was the Quality of Life Division discourages giving money or food to the homeless population as it de-incentives getting help. Instead, they request those who want to help the homeless volunteer in homeless shelters like the Long Beach Rescue Mission or donate to the institutions directly helping them. You can also help the Quality of Life Division of the LBPD by donating to the Long Beach Police Foundation, that directly helps fund it:
There was also a presentation by the police volunteer unit, a West Division Crime Statistician and a lot of success stories. One success story was of the nosy neighbor who stops a burglary in progress by recognizing what's out of place for her Wrigley Neighborhood. Six District resident Josephine Villasenor also chimed in with a success story where a homeless encampment reported that was selling drugs to minors was closed down within hours of sending in the photos to the LBPD.
