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Vol. 32 No. 15
APRIl 8 - 14, 2021
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home the North Park section of town. By JAMES BERNStEIN Brain Tap jbernstein@liherald.comreset, reboot, revitalize , & During Hurricane Sandy in de-stress on your favorite cha ir a 2012, Webb said, water rose
few dyfeet, Hazel Webb, a 65-year-old Bo Vibeup to the front of her lose weight &steps Pine. feel greon City of Long Beach mainteat inEast 10 min utesBut even in nance worker, describes her- a relatively light rainfall, she Qisaid, Mach ine place is sinking.” “This self as a calmblo person. ck the 5GWhen emf raditiation in your home, The city slee is pscheduled better tonight to comes to water — flooding in undertake one of its largest particular — she becomes quite Ion izers infrastructure projects in get energizing clean alk animated, however. aline water at your own sink decades, spending about $33 “Oh my Lord,” she said on a million of Federal Emergency sunny MondayFR afternoon, dig-D EDIT EE LIMITE ION Management Agency funds to ging out her cellphone to show mitigate flooding in North photos of six-inch-deep water Park. The project is set to begin that rises in rainstorms along in about two months, and take Roosevelt Boulevard, East Bay roughly two years to complete. Drive, Monroe Boulevard, Park Continued on page 7 Place and East Pine Street, in
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JoNAtHAN SANtANo, A North Park resident, said that people must call tow trucks often to pull their cars from flooded areas. He indicated the height to which water can rise in heavy storms.
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LBPD plan calls for more community engagement By JAMES BERNStEIN jbernstein@liherald.com
Long Beach’s new police commissioner made clear when he took office in February that changes would be coming to the city Police Department, and this week he released a pilot plan that calls for assigning officers to posts on a longer-term basis and seeing to it that they become more involved in the community they patrol. Commissioner Ron Walsh, 55, former chief of support for the Nassau County Police Department, said that he had high regard for the 66-member Long Beach force, but wanted officers
to engage more with merchants and residents by spending more time outside their patrol cars. In the past, Walsh said, officers may have been assigned to long-term posts, but were not held responsible for developing relationships in the community. His plan, however, has not found full favor with the department’s union, the Police Benevolent Association, whose top leader said he found little new in it. PBA President Brian Wells said in a statement that the union found parts of Walsh’s comments “insulting.” Wells also said that the plan includes beefing up police patrols in the largely Black
North Park section of the city, while “significantly reducing” patrols in areas such as the Canals, Ocean Beach Park and the boardwalk. No section of the city would be underserved, Walsh said, adding that under his pilot program, which is subject to change, officers will be assigned to specific areas and neighborhoods on a more permanent basis. Under this new “community geographic policing” model, he said, “Officers assigned to post cars will be expected to forge relationships with neighbors, business owners and the faithbased community.” In an interview, Walsh was
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asked if Long Beach officers had previously taken on such duties. “I would say police officers were highly responsible to do what they were asked to do,” he said, “but were not made fully aware of other responsibilities. The focus was not on getting out of their cars. This should be a larger part of their day.” He wants officers to be adept
at solving problems in the community, he said, such as what to do about double-parked cars. “This definitely involves developing deeper relations with the community,” Walsh said. His plan, he said, was inspired, at least in part, by the police killing in Minneapolis last May of George Floyd. The inciContinued on page 3