Welcome Abbot Kinney Triangle Neighbors—

Thank you so much for sharing your contact information with this project to support and protect our beautiful neighborhood. To refresh, about five of us are spearheading the formation of this new association. We distributed fliers and you responded by visiting abbotkinneytriangle.org to throw your hats into the neighborhood ring, bounded by Cabrillo, Grand, and Riviera.

As we mentioned in our flier, we have been spurred to action by the recent and alarming increase in crime, particularly “hot prowls” (break-ins while residents are home). Sadly, there has been another hot prowl since distributing the flier. It wasn’t in our Triangle, but on Venice Blvd. at Canal Street, just adjacent to the canals. Here is the homeowner’s description:

“A transient broke into my home this morning.
She climbed a wall onto my property and came in
through the front door. My pregnant wife woke me
up and I scared her out of the house where she
was arrested by LAPD in the parking lot behind my
house (while five other transients looked on passively).
We were lucky that we are safe and our
home was unharmed.”

The homeowner also wrote an open letter to local officials which you can read on our website here. Hot prowls continue to be an immediate danger in our neighborhood.Here’s what you can do:

• Keep your eyes and ears open; report dangerous or suspicious situations to 911 or other numbers below; and lock windows and doors, as much as possible, both when you are home and (of course) when you’re not.
• Write to our local officials expressing your concern. We’ve made it easy for you: visit this post on our website for email addresses of relevant public officials as well as a proposed email draft. 
• In any way you can, please help to unify our voice as a neighborhood by communicating to officials our reasonable demand for improved security—it’s an action that will get immediate response.
• Finally, please reach out to your other neighbors and friends in the Abbot Kinney Triangle to see if they signed up. If not, tell them about what we’re doing. The more voices we have, the stronger we will be to protect and support our neighborhood and neighbors.

We will keep you posted as other such crime occurs. In the meantime, we will be organizing a neighborhood meeting for early to mid-January and send out an invitation as soon as details are secured.

All our best,

Abbot Kinney Triangle Neighborhood Association

____________________________________________

PLEASE NOTE THAT IN THE ORIGINAL 12/3/14 EMAILING, CECILIA CASTILLO’S NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS WERE INCORRECT. THE BELOW INFO HAS BEEN UPDATED AND IS CORRECT.
Emergency contact information:

• 911 for in-progress crimes and life-threatening emergencies
• Police dispatch: (818) 734-2223
• LAPD Pacific Division: (310) 482-6334
• Senior Lead Officer Peggy Thusing: Mobile (310) 622-3968,[email protected]
• Abandoned Vehicles: 800-ABANDON (222-6366)
• Graffiti Problems: 311
• Councilman Mike Bonin’s office (council district 11): (310) 568-8772,[email protected]
• Cecilia CastIllo, Mike Bonin’s CD11 Venice Deputy: [email protected]

To voice your concern about the increase in crime in our neighborhood, we suggest you email the following local officials (see just below the list for an easy copy-and-paste of addresses only):

• Councilman Mike Bonin: [email protected]
• Mayor Eric Garcetti: [email protected]
• Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer: [email protected]
• Mayor Garcetti’s Westside Area Representative, Daniel Tamm: [email protected]
• LAPD Pacific Division Chief Brian Johnson: [email protected]
• LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck: [email protected]
• The 5 LAPD Police Commissioners:
  • President Steve Soboroff: [email protected]
  • Vice President Paula Madison: [email protected]
  • Commissioner Sandra Figueroa-Villa: [email protected]
  • Commissioner Kathleen Kim: [email protected]
  • Commissioner Robert M. Saltzman: [email protected]

Here are the collected addresses to easily copy and paste into your email:

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Here is a proposed draft for an email to copy, paste, and send:

Dear Mayor Garcetti, City Attorney Mike Feuer, Councilman Bonin, LAPD officials, et al,

We are neighbors of the newly formed Abbot Kinney Triangle Neighbors Association, living in the area bounded by Cabrillo, Grand, and Riviera. We are exceedingly alarmed by the rise in “hot prowls” in our neighborhood, with the most recent taking place on the morning of November 29, 2014.

Most of the perpetrators of these crimes—and car break-ins, vandalism, tire-slashing, assaults, trespass, burglaries, vehicle dwelling, and public urination/defecation—are criminal transients from the Venice Boardwalk and environs, a population that has become increasingly violent and dangerous to residents. While not all homeless people commit such crime, of course, the transient population of the Boardwalk and other pockets on the walk streets, 3rd Street, and western Venice Blvd. is terribly dangerous to the residents of Venice. We cannot understand why public officials and agencies are allowing drug addicts and dealers, felons, gang members, street thugs, the mentally ill, and the service-resistant homeless—largely hailing from outside the area—to so infringe on our safety and quality of life. Clearly there are potential solutions, visible by looking at the the safer and more protected Santa Monica Boardwalk, parks, and coastal neighborhoods. The occupations afflicting Venice are not allowed in other Los Angeles parks and should not be allowed here.

Venice needs adequate policing, and we need for the issues of the homeless of greater Los Angeles and Southern California not to be ours alone. Disastrous, tragic crimes have already been committed as a direct result of the conditions public officials have allowed to continue in our backyards. Our officials MUST find ways around the Jones Settlement and the Lavan and Desertrain decisions. And, as it does throughout the rest of the City’s park system, we need for the City of Los Angeles to enforce the municipal code against camping in city parks in the Venice Beach Recreation Area.

Sincerely,

Venice Resident

[Please sign your actual name—it’ll have a better impact.]

Thank you for helping to make our neighborhood safer!

Written on November 29, 2014, by a neighbor at Venice Blvd. and the Canals:

A transient broke into my home this morning. She climbed a wall onto my property and came in through the front door. My pregnant wife woke me up and I scared her out of the house where she was arrested by LAPD in the parking lot behind my house (while five other transients looked on passively).  We were lucky that we are safe and our home was unharmed.

Councilman Bonin: I would love to sit down with you, in my home or your office or around Venice, and understand what the plan is moving forward. Nearly five years ago you sat in my kitchen making promises with Councilman Rosendahl and nothing has changed—in fact, things have gotten worse. This neighborhood will no longer sit idly by while mentally disturbed and drug-addicted transients run amok in our homes and lives.

My years of fear of something like this happening to me and my family have now become reality. I cannot help but think that the system in place (by you and others) plays a part.  The norm of turning the other cheek to incidents like this has to stop.  You are putting peoples’ lives in danger.

“Cities get mired in civil rights disputes in trying to deal with growing homeless populations,” ABA Journal, cover story, November 1, 2014

“Where Debris Meets the Sea,” The Argonaut, November 26, 2014: “Group sues city to remove campsites on Venice Beach; others urge compassion for homeless”