Yesterday, the City announced the details of their outreach strategy to gather public input on the qualities that Angelenos want to see in their next police chief.  In early September, the city will hold four public outreach meetings in the Valley, South L.A., the Westside and, as Zach Behrens notes, near the Eastside.

As Livable Streets advocates, we need to be vocal in the coming weeks about what we want in a police commissioner but to do that we need a message and a plan.  We’ve all seen some ridiculous mis-enforcement of the law when it comes to cyclists or pedestrian issues.  Some of them, like the LAPD’s botched reporting and bungling defensive follow-up concerning the hummer assault on Andres Tena have been reported on Streetsblog.  Others, such as the time a DWP truck struck and killed a cyclist in a crosswalk that resulted in no arrests because the "cyclist was going the wrong way in the crosswalk," were not.

I haven’t heard of an organized effort to make certain that the new police chief is a hawk on traffic justice and ensuring safe streets, so I’m starting one on my own.  I’ve set up a Livable Streets Discussion Group here so that we can figure out a message, an outreach strategy and make sure we follow-through with that strategy.  Anyone can view our discussions, unless the group decides to close our discussions, but to contribute you need to be a member of the Livable Streets Network.  Don’t worry, it’s not hard to sign-up, follow the instructions here.

For those that want to testify at these hearings but don’t want to join the party, a list of all the dates is after the jump.

Downtown San Francisco as seen from Potrero Hill.
Photo: Joe Bencharsky

This week brought urban history lessons to StreetsWiki from Livable Streets members coast to coast.

Joe Bencharsky penned a neighborhood profile of Potrero Hill, San Francisco, where his family has lived for three generations. Says Joe:

Partly because of street and freeway configuration, partly because of
topography, The Hill is an out of the way community even though it has
close proximity to some of the most active parts of The City. There are
only a few streets that circumvent the freeways that allow traffic
through to The Hill via somewhat circuitous routes.

Meanwhile in New York, Susan Donovan contributed a fascinating entry on the history of Madison Avenue Bus Lanes — a rare remnant of the Koch administration’s largely unrealized 1980 congestion reduction plan.

Elsewhere this week, the new Echo Park and Silverlake Livable Streets chapter of Los Angeles County announces a ride spotlighting roads prioritized in a proposed bike plan; the South Bronx Livable Streets group publicizes a Harlem River rezoning City Council hearing on June 23; and there are new Livable Streets groups for Detroit residents and folding bike users.