Fair Haven Policing District - Sergeant Johnson

On my way home from work yesterday I came across this!

5 off road (2 dirt bikes and 3 quads) barreling down East Street at top speed.
They blew through the light, causing oncoming traffic to screech to a stop as they continued to tear down the street at top speed.

I managed to take a picture as fast as I could.
What can be done about this???

This property is condemned according to the city, yet it is completely open and is a serious danger for neighborhood children. This property has been sitting in this condition for almost two years. Plus, prostitutes and drug dealers park in front of the house because it is very dark with no lighting. When is the city going to have this house torn down? Will the city patrol the area so that drug dealers and prostitutes no longer hang out right in front of this blighted house?

Why do the police continue to let prostitutes run rampant up and down Ferry Street and the side streets? This just increases drug activity and brings in more undesirable people. These prostitutes are also dealing for the dealers to get their drugs and I see the police pass by and do nothing, looks like the police do not care and have given up on Fair Haven, which was once a nice area to live in. What do we need to do to have the police do something??? Each time I call the police take forever to get there and the girls disappear and the dealers hide and when they do stop any of these girls the girls walk away laughing what a slap in the face to the good people in the area

"Its all fun and games till someone loses an eye"There are signs posted on the bridge that say "no fishing from bridge" and the fisherman are continually fishing right under the sign. This poses a very dangerous problem for boaters. As we try to go under the bridge, there are line and hooks dangling everywhere. Some of the people are curteous enough to pull their lines and let you through, others start yelling and throwing things. I have had everthing from beer cans and other garbage to lead weights thrown. Last year a women on a boat was hooked in the scalp by a fishing lure and I have had close calls with lures myself. I have called the bridge operations number numerous times to ask them to call police when there people fishing from the bridge, I have also called police to file a report, still, last night June 8th, I counted 28 fisherman. Will they not act until someone loses an eye and sues the city?

I need your help fighting recent acts of vandalism in our neighborhood. Specifically, somebody seems hell-bent to destroy the new playground on Dover Beach across from Quinnipiac Terrace. Over the last couple weeks, somebody has torn down two of the fence panels around the playground and systematically destroyed the trash bin there. About a week ago, they dumped all the trash and crushed the bin so it wouldn’t stand anymore. The bin is made of plastic, so I pushed the sides back out as best I could, picked up the trash and put it back in. A couple days later they dumped out the trash again and took the wheels off, so the bin was lop sided and would no longer stand up. I picked up again and tied the bin to the fence. Next morning it was untied, tipped over, and trash was all around. So yesterday evening I removed the broken bin and brought a new, more stable bin from my house and put it there. This morning the trash had been dumped out again, and the bin had been rolled down the street almost 2 blocks away. I know the vandals are coming at night, because we’ve been to the playground in the late afternoon and all is well, but I when walk by every morning at 5:30 am, there is damage again.

The fence should be repaired asap. We also need a heavy metal trash bin that is bolted to the ground; the older bins in the park are like that and there is no problem with them. And the police should check out the playground and see who hangs out there during the night.

We need to put an end to this. The kids in the neighborhood deserve a clean and unbroken playground, and research shows that unchecked acts of vandalism are usually followed by other types of crimes. I have called Public Works about this, but so far nothing has happened. Please help, and let me know who else I should contact.

I don't get it: the public has presumably called in hundreds maybe even thousands of times now about the less than ten or so dirt bikes--they are the SAME bikes--ridden year-in, year-out with the same riders--that recklessly run at everyone pedestrians, cars, ride at and on sidewalks with children playing, joyriding at dangerously high speeds. In addition the public has: helped pass the new confiscation law passed in 2013 to address uninsured, unlicensed, reckless ridership(Sen. Martin Looney just sent me campaign lit. about it).

And yet here we are in 2014: the same group of young adults and adults alike behaving badly with no consequence. Perfectly peaceful Sunday and then this. Is this problem *really* that hard to solve? Can we solve it once are for all so that NHPD can focus their efforts elsewhere? We know the bikes, what they look like, what decals they have, who the riders are and in most cases even where they live.

Again, I don't get it. Happy 2014.

I ride this route often and feel that a bike route from Clinton Avenue, across Lombard and Humphrey to Orange, continues to be sorely needed.

I feel that this issue should remain open until a route that all persons -- age 8 to 80 -- feel comfortable riding their bikes on. Although sharrows are a minor improvement over nothing, adding sharrows to the road simply does not do that.

65 people previously voted on this issue: "Bike lane needed from Clinton Avenue to Orange Street," but that issue is being closed because sharrows have been installed. http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/8658-bike-lane-needed-from-clinton-avenue-to-orange-street

Sharrows are ineffective at increasing cycling rates unless speeds are reduced to 20MPH.

Portland, OR, and New York City, NY, are currently doing this along hundreds of miles of their residential streets.

Studies show that very few people will feel comfortable bicycling on roads unless speeds are strictly capped at 20MPH -- no matter what kind of paint you have on the road.

Achieving these average speeds along bike routes can be done through various traffic calming and traffic engineering methods. Berkeley has pioneered this decades ago this with its "bicycle boulevards," and many cities have since followed.
It is best to call them "slow streets", since they have a tremendous benefit for pedestrians and property owners as well.

The sharrows here should be replaced with street engineering that meets the standards of the NACTO -- whether bike lanes, buffered bike lanes, traffic calmed boulevards, or some other feature: http://nacto.org/cities-for-cycling/design-guide/ .

High speeds, completely reckless joy riding continues and has continued (sporadically) for weeks now. 3 young adult riders out at 7:30PM tonight, 9-18-13, barely visible in the night time hours to drivers and pedestrians.

Also, one kid riding tonight has been riding his red and white dirt bike for weeks now with zero consequence to him despite my suspicion that it is known to many who he is and where he lives. A likely message he is getting from inaction is that he is above the law; not a good lesson to learn at any age.

A group of ATVs was tearing up QRP tonight. Very dangerous swerving in and out of pedestrians along the park. Police called.

Drug dealers and prostitutes are using the bus stop on Ferry & Grafton St as their headquarters.

No change, pedestrians walking on Front Street must still watch out for driver coming out of the condos near the intersection of Front with Lewis Street. The drivers are so intent on watching for cars headed north on Freont Street that they do not look at the sidewalk to their right.

At the same time pedestrians must watch for drivers that do not stop at the Lewis Street and Front street, southern directed stop signs and drivers that do not stop at the badly positioned, north directed Front Street stop sign. A different ticket has been opened on the need for speed bumps or something else to get drivers to at least slowdown at these stop signs,

This is an over all dangerous intersection that must be re-engineered. In the meanwhile the neighborly thing would be for the condo association to put up a sign to remind their residents to look for pedestrians, particularly children, to the right as they exit the parking lot.

There is a community playground across the street.