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2023 Police Week
Tag: safety
Categories
Register your security camera
Police Lt. Mike Villegas, speaking at our Annual General Membership Meeting on April 22, suggested anyone in Palm Springs with a residential or business security camera register it with the Police Department. This link will take you to a Public Camera Registry page, from which you can easily partner with Palm Springs police when they are trying to determine whether crimes have been captured on video.
“Participation in this program will help strengthen our investigative abilities and give us an easier way to communicate more effectively with potential witnesses,” the Police Department says.
The Police Department has invited us to attend its fall Community Police Academy. Its mission is to strengthen community partnerships by offering the opportunity to interact with PSPD professional staff, increase their understanding of police operations and become ambassadors to the community.
The free, interactive course is designed to acquaint adults who live or work in the Greater Palm Springs community who are not sworn police officers with the activities of the Police Department.
The Community Police Academy will run twice annually for 12 sessions in the winter and fall of each year. The classes starting September 20, 2022, will meet on select Tuesday nights from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Along with the classroom sessions, participants will have the opportunity to attend one ride-along session.
Classes fill up quickly and applicants are accepted on a first come, first served basis. For more information, visit:
City officials came to Canyon Palms on April 8 to celebrate the reduction of speed limits on 36 street segments in Palm Springs.
Mayor Lisa Middleton and State Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, the author of Assembly Bill AB43, explained that the new state law gave cities the authority to reduce speed limits to prevent traffic and pedestrian fatalities and injuries.
They unveiled a new speed limit sign near the corner of La Verne Way and Toledo Avenue. Also attending were the city manager, police and fire chiefs, and officials of ONE-PS and Canyon Palms, which had both made the speed limit reductions a priority. In 2021, Palm Springs had 1,500 traffic collisions resulting in 450 injuries and 16 deaths. That fatality rate was disproportionate to the city’s population and up from an average of nine killed each year since 2013.
In our neighborhood, Toledo Avenue’s speed limit has been reduced from 45 to 40. The higher limit was a result of state law formerly basing limits on traffic engineers determining the speed at which 85 percent of cars travel on a roadway. So roads that speeding made more dangerous automatically got higher speed limits, increasing the risk of fatalities.
Categories
Security Tips
We advised participants in our October 2021 neighborhood-wide yard sale to take these precautions, repeated here for anyone who may be having a yard sale or selling goods online:
- Lock your home and car while the sale is in progress. Never allow anyone inside for any reason. If someone needs to use a restroom, rather than let them into your house, common sense suggests you direct them to a nearby public facility (Ralph’s)
- Do not sell alone. There is safety in numbers, so invite your friends and family to help.
- Do not keep too much cash with you. As money comes in, designate someone to take it inside. If you have a fanny pack or bank bag, you might want to keep your money in there.
- If a buyer asks you to break a large bill, offer to hold the item while they leave to get change.
- Keep jewelry or high-priced items close by to keep an eye on your most valuable items.
- Sell your items in your driveway or yard, not in an enclosed garage. Doing so blocks visibility and can be dangerous for sellers.
- Call police if someone is acting suspiciously, so have a phone handy.
The city has a webpage with updated information about projects to improve pedestrian safety through traffic calming. The projects include:
- An all-way stop at La Verne Way and Toledo Avenue.
- Upgrading the crosswalk street markings on Toledo Avenue at Maricopa, with a new curb ramp on the north side of Toledo Avenue. (This description has been corrected since it was originally posted in April.)
Click this link: Citywide Traffic Calming Projects | City of Palm Springs (palmspringsca.gov) to see what those planned projects and several others will look like. The Canyon Palms Neighborhood Organization would like to thank Joel Montalvo, Francisco Jaime and Donn Uleyo with the city Engineering Services for keeping us in the loop.