Letter to the City Council: D Leach

From: 	David Leach
602 Chestnut St. #4
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

To:	Santa Cruz City Council
Re:	SCPD bicycle-safety grant

Dear Santa Cruz City Council Members,

I understand that a $0.5 Million grant to the Santa Cruz Police
Department for a "bicycle safety" program is on your agenda today. 
First I am disappointed that as a member of the SC County RTC's
bicycle advisory committee I did not have a chance to see this
proposal before your public hearing today.  The City's bicycle
committee got its first look three days ago without any chance to
involve the bicycle community.  My request is to ask to you hold off
on approving this grant until all the public advisory bodies have had
a chance to look at it.  I am neither for or against this proposal at
the moment because I have not seen it, but I am highly suspicious that
not all of it will be beneficial to bicyclists, precisely because it
was not brought to our attention beforehand.

Unfortunately, at the moment the police are not seen as a great ally
for bicyclists and pedestrians because of the way they handled an
aggressive auto attack on a bicyclist earlier this week.  A man
driving a pickup truck evidently "lost it," revved his engine and
drove into a crowd of people in a crosswalk hitting a cyclist.  The
Santa Cruz PD talked to a large number of witnesses who gave very
damning testimony against the driver.  In spite of this overwhelming
evidence that the man committed an intentional life-threatening crime
against another person, the police called it an "accident" and let the
man go without a citation (or any obligation to fix the bicycle he ran
over).  If you have ever walked or bicycled around town I'm sure you
are as outraged about this as I am.

Before we give the SCPD any money for bicycle safety I think we
deserve: 1) a full accounting for their actions in this road-rage case
; and 2) a chance to see what they propose spending the money on.  If
it is a good program you will have cyclists showing up at public
meetings in favor of additional funding for the police.  Bicyclists
would love to have the police on their side for improving bicycling
conditions in Santa Cruz.  Any enforcement efforts need to be even
handed, however.  Bicyclists who ride on the wrong side of the road or
blatantly blow red lights should be sent to a bicycle-violators
traffic school.  On the other hand, motorists who intimidate and
endanger bicyclists by either intentional or careless actions should
be ticketed and fined.  Not every car-bike collision is the fault of
the bicyclist and when motorists are found at fault they need to
suffer appropriate consequences.  After this recent car attack,
however, its hard for a bicyclist to believe he has any rights
whatsoever as far as the Santa Cruz police are concerned.


Yours sincerely,


David Leach