LAPD

Original Video via Ron Kaye LA. Current video via Ubrayj 02 via You Tube.  You can find more from the hearing on his You Tube page.

The City Clerk's office just emailed out copies of next week's City Council Transportation Committee Agenda.  When the Committee meets next Wednesday at 2:00 P.M. it will be celebrating Bike to Work week with an agenda full of bike items.

Last Friday the LAPD was at it again.  In what they claimed was an effort to make the intersection of Wilshire and Western safer for pedestrians, the LAPD was handing out tickets to pedestrians who crossed the street against a flashing red hand.  In the ten minutes I observed their their ticketing I observed the following.

For as long as I've been in Los Angeles, there has been a side bar on the Midnight Ridazz official website which reads:

Attorneys for David Jassy, the Swedish rapper who beat and ran over jazz pianist James Osnes for touching his SUV which was waiting in the crosswalk that Osnes was trying to cross, came up with a strategy designed to sway someone who a) believes that crashes where cars hit and kill pedestrians are unavoidable and b) is incredibly gullible.

Last Friday, participants in Los Angeles Critical Mass, members of the local community and other assorted transportation activists all gathered at Los Angeles' newest Ghost Bike for a memorial for Jesus Castillo and rally for safer streets for cyclists.  Nearly 300 riders participated in the memorial which included a "die-in" where hundreds of cyclists laid down on the street in a similar manner to war protesters.  There to witness the act were a handful of LAPD officers and a representative of Eric Garcetti's office.

For anyone that doesn't think there's a bias against cyclists from the Los Angeles Police Department, they should check out this first hand report from Dr. Alex Thompson at Westside BikeSIDE of a hummer running through a group of cyclists from behind multiple times, putting some of them in the hospital, dragging a bike several blocks and then having the LAPD officers on the scene bizarrely blame the cyclists.

Late last night, 5th District City Councilman and candidate for City Attorney Jack Weiss responded to our candidate survey.  While Streetsblog has been critical of some of Weiss' transportation priorities as Councilman, there's a lot to like in Weiss's responses to our questions.  Some highlights:

In a report to the City Council, Chief William Bratton of the LAPD recommends to the City Council the discontinuation of the wildly unpopular bicycle licensing programming and announces that the LAPD will no longer enforce bicycle licensing unless the Los Angeles City Council. That the Council would push for the implementation of this program seems unlikely as two councilmembers basically yelled at an LAPD representative to kill the program when the LAPD was still defending it.  The City Council Transportation Committee will hear the LAPD's reccomendations next Wednesday.