Politics & Government

Safety and Crime Worries at Neighborhood Council Meeting

Council member Josè Huizar attended Tuesday night's meeting at Eagle Rock City Hall.

The voted unanimously at its monthly board meeting Tuesday to set up a task force for “public safety and quality of life issues” surrounding the , where the latest in a set of violent incidents left a young woman with mild injuries to her neck following an alleged assault with a knife by a teenage boy.

Membership to the task force is open to all residents and stakeholders in Eagle Rock, ERNC President Michael Larsen said at the end of one of the most informative—and interactive—board meetings in months.

The meeting began with a public comment from longtime Eagle Rock resident John Goldfarb, who expressed his concern at the spike in neighborhood property crimes in recent months. "Despite the incidents, you think of Eagle Rock as a safe place," Goldfarb said, citing statistics from a Los Angeles Times database that found property crimes in Eagle Rock to be higher than those in Highland Park and Glassell Park over a recent six-month period.

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Yosemite Park Vandalism

Among the meeting’s highlights—especially from the point of view of public participation—was an account by an Eagle Rock resident of her family’s distressful experiences at Yosemite Park since they bought a house in its vicinity five years ago.

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The resident, Theresa Coxwell, read out a portion of a September 2010 email that she said her husband had sent to the office of , who attended Tuesday evening’s meeting at Eagle Rock City Hall to make his own presentation about civic and safety issues both in the neighborhood and in the city generally.

The email started out by saying that although “graffiti, drug and alcohol use, and gang activity in this park has forced the tax-paying community out of the park,” Coxwell and her husband Morgan have relied on the facility from time to time as a family resource.

“My wife and I recently had our first child, a son, and because this is the closest park to our home, have tried many times to put him in the stroller and walk him through the park to get fresh air and surroundings,” Coxwell said, reading from the email. “Each time we've tried we swear to it being our last.”

Coxwell added that “we just got a response to our email—today” from Huizar’s office and that she wanted to know whether “we are going to get responses from the City Council about concerns we have.”

Huizar apologized for the delay in responding to the Coxwell family’s email and said that he has instructed his staff to respond to public complaints within 48 hours of receiving them.

Recreational Vehicles a Neighborhood Menace

Huizar’s apology was also directed toward Jennifer Nutting, an Eagle Rock resident and LAUSD teacher who recounted her frustrations at getting city authorities to do anything about a recreational vehicle parked in front of her house on Ellenwood Drive.

Nutting said she regularly observes “screaming matches at 2 a.m.” from the RV across the street from her bedroom. “I call the Department of Transportation, they come out, have a pleasant chat with the [RV] occupants and then leave,” said Nutting, adding: “I feel like the proper [City] channels are not working for me.”

Nutting went on to say that trash from the RV constantly litters the sidewalk—“my friends call me camp host,” she joked—and that although three people living in the RV were arrested for alleged drug dealing on Christmas eve last year, no action has been taken against the vehicle itself.

“I just want to bring that to a public forum because nothing’s happening,” Nutting said.

Huizar assured Nutting that his office would approach the Department of Transportation and the LAPD and ask them to look into her complaints.

Huizar Responds to Residents’ Complaints and Concerns

The Council member also read out the contents of five complaints and inquiries from Eagle Rock stakeholders that the co-chair for ERNC’s Outreach and Event Planning Committee, Robert Guevara, had recently received via email.

“According to your website, stakeholders can schedule one-on-one meetings with the Council member by appointment” said one email, from Stephen T. Kia, president of the ROCK Community Center, located a few blocks east of Yosemite Park. “Why has your staff been unresponsive to my request for an appointment for the past eight months (since the election in March)?”

Huizar asked his deputies, who were present at the ERNC board meeting, to redress Kia’s grievance.

City’s Battle Against Proliferation of Medical Marijuana Facilities

In a roughly half-hour presentation, Huizar gave an update on the City Council’s struggle to control medical marijuana dispensaries—and how those efforts are largely tied to the outcome of a recent court ruling that allows the City to restrict and limit the dispensaries but not to authorize, advance or permit them because marijuana is an illegal drug under federal law.

Huizar said he expects the court ruling to be repealed. (Unless the City of Long Beach, which is the defendant in the case, appeals the ruling, it is set to become law this month.)

ERNC President Larsen read out a list of 15 medical marijuana facilities in Eagle Rock, which, he said, are reportedly part of a loosely regulated $1.7-billion industry nationwide.

Marijuana and Massage

Larsen also pointed out that another matter of concern for the community is that “there are a lot of massage parlors right next to” the marijuana facilities. (Although the vast majority of massage parlors are known to indulge in some form of illicit sex, there is little that the City can do to shut them down because they are permitted under state law.) A couple of massage parlors that the City did manage to shut down in recent months for City code violations are back in business, Larsen told Huizar.

An Eagle Rock resident in the audience said he is “very concerned” as a parent about the presence of medical marijuana dispensaries in the neighborhood. “What can I do as a community member?” he asked Huizar.

The Council member urged the resident to contact his office about “the more problematic dispensaries” in Eagle Rock. “If you smell smoke, report it—they’re not allowed to smoke in public,” Huizar said, adding that the same applies to young people seen entering dispensaries when they clearly look underage and are unaccompanied by a guardian.

Following Huizar’s presentation, Assistant City Attorney Asha Greenberg offered a broad overview the City’s efforts to grapple with the proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries, including lawsuits that the City has filed against two facilities in Eagle Rock.

Greenberg said that every week she receives reports of three to five medical marijuana facilities opening in Los Angeles and that a recently launched federal crackdown against the industry in California is currently focused only in counties such as Riverside, San Bernadino and Orange County, where there is an outright ban on pot facilities.

Correction: An earlier version of this article quoted Jennifer Nutting as saying that her friends refer to her as "compost"—presumably a reference to the trash that occupants of recreational vehicles leave on the street and sidewalk facing her home on Ellenwood Drive. The correct phrase is "camp host."


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