LAPD Provides Radar Guns to Put the Brakes on Speeders

So you’ve got a speeding problem in your neighborhood. Nothing seems to slow down the scofflaws, not even your screaming, as they zoom down your street.

Here’s how to get a radar gun for your neighborhood group.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s West Traffic Division is supplying free radar equipment in a new program that will allow residents to monitor speeding motorists.

The strategy is simple: residents work in groups along the sides of their streets. One person holds the radar gun while the others write down license plate numbers. Police send warning letters to the registered owners of vehicles seen speeding.

Police provide a radar gun and a log book for each outing, and choose the locations to be staked out as part of the Community Speed Watch Program. Groups conduct the operations up to four hours at a time during the day.

The program is open to neighborhood associations and homeowner groups. The groups apply directly to the Police Department, designating the street they want to monitor and describing the speeding problem.

A group of homeowners in the Beverly Glen area on the Westside inaugurated the effort earlier this month.

Those who take part in the monitoring program undergo a one-hour training session in which they learn how to use the radar gun, how to log license plate numbers and how to locate the safest places from which to monitor the road.

For information, call Officer Sol Lebus at the LAPD’s West Traffic Division, (310) 840-2122.