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| Too many 4th of July calls to field |
Tonight at 1900 Atlantic Ave around fifty concerned community members of West Division met to discuss crime and safety in their neighborhoods. The West Division recently merged with the South Division making it one of Long Beach's largest divisions. It currently encompasses a network of neighborhoods including: MacArthur Park, the AOC7, Altimos Beach, East Village, Wrigley, Downtown, Roosevelt and the Washington Neighborhoods.
The meeting began with a presentation focused on communication and questions about the 911 dispatch center. The presentation began with facts about response times based on the severity of the report. According to the presenter calls are broken down into three levels of severity, with level one receiving the fastest response time: usually just a few minutes.
Because the majority of concerns I see posted on Nextdoor were about response time, here was a direct answer to questions about how long it may take 911 to pick up a call.
According to the presenter normally calls are picked up on the second ring. However, if the call comes in late at night when less officers are manning the phones and a lot of citizens may be calling in about the same thing, it may take a little longer to sort through all the calls. In other words, if there are gun shots at 2am and twenty people call in about it, someone will have their call fielded last and may experience a longer wait time.
Much of the meeting centered on remaining a "hard target" for trending crimes. If you follow this blog you already know that trend is auto theft. Commander Smith did say that owners of older model Hondas and Toyotas should be on higher alert. Also it was stated most of these crimes are happening later at night, around midnight. Questions bout how to protect yourself from other trending crimes, like the theft of catalytic converters, were not greeted with answers.
You can find out how insurance companies have answered these questions, since the problem does affect their bottom line.
Questions that came from the community ranged from concerns about abandoned vehicles with expired registration and compliments to neighbors who had thwarted recent theft attempts. One comment that stood out was how a group of neighbors wanted to host a movie night of the lawn of the neighbor who helped stopped a neighborhood theft. The reason was two-fold: to say thank you and to get the neighbors out and talking to each other. The more people in your neighborhood that come together, the safer it will be. And ideas like this would bring out people who may not show up at volunteer opportunities like neighborhood clean ups.
Question: What can I do for my neighborhood to quiet things down on the 4th of July?
Answer: You got me. Probably nothing.
My biggest disappointment with the meeting was Commander Smith's answer to how can we bring the noise down on the 4th of July, which was unacceptable in my neighborhood last year. To sum up the answer I got from Commander Smith [I am paraphrasing here]:
You got me. There are too many calls. It's the fault of the neighboring cities that sell them. You can only put up so many signs. Get used to it being uncomfortably loud.
With my respect and admiration to the officers who have done wonderful things for my neighborhood most of us will never know about because we aren't the ones dealing with them, that's not an answer I am willing to accept.
* Update: City council representatives from district 4 and 5 attended the meeting. If there were any representatives from District Two or Six, they were never introduced. Both District Two and Six are served by West Division so they should be present at its meetings. This is important to know because part of the meeting is to report crime trends and measure community involvement. f your council member does not show up and does not send any representative, the consequences for your district are clear.
