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4th Avenue Bridge Unites Communities Divides Neighbors

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Category: Community News

Published on Thursday, 13 June 2013 16:03

Written by Dianne Lawrence

The  4th Ave. Bridge,    (located west of Arlington) unites communities north and south of the Santa Monica Freeway. By day, bike riders, locals and school kids use it regularly. By night, it's a different story.  According to residents adjacent to either side of the bridge, it becomes a haven for drug activity, prostitutes, graffiti and toilet use. These residents, tired of being witnesses to and victims of the nefarious nighttime activity, began advocating for a closure of the bridge at their local block club. The slow beating of the drum pulled others to their cause and created a groundswell that resulted in a community meeting at the Council District 10 office on May 20th, Monday evening.   Approximately 50-60 affected residents were deftly managed by  CD10 deputy Kimani Black. He began the meeting by letting everyone know he would not allow for any of  the contention that had been taking place in emails flying back and forth and that closure of the bridge was not going to be the outcome of this meeting. It would only be allowed as a last resort if other efforts failed.  Instead, he praised the sense of “community ownership” of the bridge and wanted to use the meeting to focus on identifying the problems in order to come up with solutions.  He also conveyed Councilman Wesson’s commitment to installing more effective lighting on the bridge. He suggested the possible use of cameras monitored by the police and accessible to community members.

This seemed to please those in favor of keeping the bridge open (strangely, some of whom had fought successfully to close their own streets for similar reasons but who now wanted to continue enjoying the easy access of the bridge) and frustrate those who were experiencing the nighttime consequences.  

One resident complained that people parked in front of his property, then walked across the bridge only to return later.  “Why?” he wondered alluding to the use of the bridge for illegal activity.  “Close it” was his response when asked for a solution.  Another neighbor expressed concern with what his kids were witnessing, including someone urinating on their lawn as they pulled up in their car one evening.  But other neighbors claimed the issues were overblown.  One resident created laughter when he claimed “We’ve all stopped and wondered ‘what kind of poop is this'" but closing the bridge would have forced his disabled son to walk out of his way to get to the park, leaving him exhausted once he got there.

Jeff Camp, a United Neighborhood Neighborhoods council member shared that UNNC might have cameras available and encouraged people to approach the council to fund community projects that would help them reclaim the bridge, perhaps a mural or plantings to discourage the graffiti. Bernie Oliver wondered why police presence wasn’t more aggressive. Kimani suggested that if neighbors became more involved in patrolling, the police would also step up their patrols.  Another resident made the point that closing the bridge would mean less people paying attention thereby giving criminals more opportunity for mischief. He supported creating more bike lanes so that you would have increased positive use of the bridge night and day. 

The meeting lasted well over an hour and ended with an optimistic call by Kimani for neighbors to start becoming active, get together, join each other's Facebook pages, network, pool resources and come up with solutions.  

Some of the meeting members later reported to TNN they had gone over to see the problems for themselves.  One noticed that none of the houses next to the bridge entrances on either side provided any night lights which could be used to shed some light on the matter.  Another reported the bridge looked fairly clean but noticed that 23rd St., the short block-long section of 23rd that ended at the entrance on the north side of the bridge, was strewn with litter and graffiti. She wondered how you could focus on keeping the bridge clean if adjacent streets were unkempt. 

At the end of the meeting two neighbors were overheard in the following conversation…. “Well looks like the bridge stays open” followed by “Oh this was only the opening salvo."  

Photo by Dawn Kirkpatrick

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