PACOIMA : Alarcon Unveils Plan to Improve Street Lighting

In a back alley that just a few months ago was a gang stronghold, City Councilman Richard Alarcon unveiled a plan Thursday morning to light the darkened streets of his district, which he describes as one of the most poorly lighted in the city.

“Wherever you turn the lights on, the criminal flees,” said Valley Deputy Police Chief Martin Pomeroy, who joined Alarcon in the press conference to announce the project, “Operation Lights On.”

Alarcon and other Los Angeles officials laid out the plan to install and upgrade scores of lights in the next two months and potentially bring thousands more street lights to Alarcon’s district in the future. Alarcon’s district includes the northeast Valley as well as parts of Sun Valley and North Hollywood.

City officials promised to have 16 street lights added and five others upgraded by Oct. 1 on the standard city system that provides uninterrupted light along major streets. They also promised another 60 “utilitarian” lights throughout the district, which would be installed in alleyways.

Utilitarian lights are smaller and easier to install on telephone poles, city officials said. They also promised to upgrade another 85 of the utilitarian lights already installed in the district.

Alarcon gave special thanks to Minor E. Jimenez, a Foothill Division senior lead officer who brought to his attention how inadequate street lighting is connected to crime when.

“One of the things I noticed was that the majority of crimes we were having were in the late afternoon and evening hours,” Jimenez said. In this particular alley, between Amboy and Rincon streets, just off Van Nuys Boulevard, the territory had been tightly controlled by two neighborhood gangs as recently as seven months ago.

But by using community policing tactics, Jimenez was able to turn the alley around, getting pay phones that had attracted drug dealers pulled out, persuading neighbors to help paint over graffiti and getting the utilitarian light installed on a telephone pole in the middle of the alley.

“Gang members, by their attire, by their walk, by their graffiti, are sending out a message,” Jimenez said. “We have to send a message out to them that we are not going to tolerate it.”

George Eslinger, director of the bureau of street lighting in the Department of Public Works, said the number of lights in the 7th Council District had been low in the past because “there had never been an expression of interest” in lighting, which is not a mandated service.

Only recently have residents started to push for more and better lighting as a way of improving their neighborhoods and fighting crime, Eslinger said.

The funding for the new lighting is still unclear, however. Alarcon has included private help in his effort to light streets. For example, his office was able to get a developer for a project in Sylmar to agree to put in lighting on nearby Hubbard Street even though it does not directly affect their project but does illuminate a darkened street.

City officials are also trying to put together funding from a variety of federal sources, including the recently approved Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative Project, which targets improvements to a neighborhood in Sun Valley, and empowerment zones that would help improve part of Pacoima. But some of the costs to maintain the lighting may have to be paid through assessment districts.

Eslinger said the bureau of lighting will be using two new anti-vandalism crews to repair damaged lights and make improvements to prevent further damage, including bullet-resistant shields and steel plating to protect wiring.

“We are going to work on this until every single street is lighted,” Alarcon said.