It’s good to know there’s finally a solution to the crime problem in Los Angeles. Simply stop having anything worth stealing.
Residents have already been warned not to wear jewelry or expensive watches. Now we can’t have street lights.
Or at least, we can’t have the kind that have electrical wiring.
As you already know if you live in Los Angeles, the city is having some trouble keeping the lights on. It’s not just the usual problem with an unreliable electricity grid. It’s the inability to fix street lights fast enough to keep up with the vandalism and copper wire theft committed by, in the words of City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, “people living in poverty who are pushed into acts of desperation.”
Not everybody on the council agrees with that characterization. Councilmember Imelda Padilla said the copper wire thefts are the result of “sophisticated, smart, clever, organized crime.”
That may be true, but criminals don’t have to be sophisticated, smart, clever or organized to outwit the Los Angeles city government. All they have to do is show up, and the city does the rest.
The latest brainstorm from our leaders is the solar street light.
In January, after the expensive new 6th Street Viaduct was hit by copper wire thieves, Councilmember Heather Hutt introduced a motion asking the Bureau of Street Lighting to study the possibility of replacing the city’s street lights with solar-powered lights. She said this would “minimize the impacts of vandalism due to copper wire and power theft.”
Power theft? Might that be related to the proliferation of sidewalk tent encampments?
If solar lights can fix that problem, the city will probably get sued over installing them.
Miguel Sangalang, executive director and general manager of the Bureau of Street Lighting, said the solar-powered lights have “little to no street value,” so city officials think criminals are less likely to steal them. He said there has been an estimated tenfold increase in the number of street lights put out of commission by thieves in the last five or six years, and the city doesn’t have enough electricians to handle the repair calls. The waiting period to get a street light fixed can be months or even a year.
So the city’s new crime prevention plan is to stop having anything worth stealing.
Last week Mayor Karen Bass was in Van Nuys to announce a new solar street light pilot program. The city has installed 104 solar street lights near the Children’s Community School. This particular neighborhood, represented by Imelda Padilla, was chosen because so many of the streets are now without working lights.
“We will continue to deliver solutions that improve city services, that make neighborhoods safer, more welcoming and cleaner while building a greener future that embraces renewable energy sources,” Bass said.
Read between the lines and you can almost hear her pollster shouting on the phone. People don’t feel safe walking in their own neighborhoods. And they’re tired of the city looking like a garbage dump.
Maybe the “greener future” talk means she hopes to get the money for the new street lights, which cost up to $5,000 each, from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in Sacramento. It’s filled up with cash from the cap-and-trade program, a hidden tax on energy that makes gasoline and electricity more expensive. However, 25% of the money in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund goes toward building the bullet train, and the High-Speed Rail Authority will likely need more cash in reserve in case its copper wires get stolen.
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That’s happening to Metrolink, the regional rail system that operates more than 500 miles of tracks, signals and gate crossings powered through copper wires. Thieves have been cutting sections of wire and, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, likely selling it to local recycling centers.
These thefts are causing delays in both train and vehicle traffic, because when signals and gate crossings are inoperable, nothing can safely move.
The government’s solution? Sheriff’s detectives are investigating the recycling centers. Business owners could lose their licenses and even face prison time for buying stolen materials.
They’ll probably just close down and move. A lot of businesses find that the light is better in Texas.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley