• Photo Gallery: Crackdown on school zone speeders
WEST WHITTIER – As children walked past him Friday on their way to West Whittier Elementary School, Officer Charles Quijada kept an eye out for speeders and other traffic scofflaws.
He pointed the laser-powered Ultra Lyte LTI 20-20 at an incoming van.
“Forty-two. Astro van,” he said loudly.
Officer Ben Ray Sotelo took off on his motorcycle and followed the vehicle, which stopped abruptly.
The officers belong to the five-member Community Oriented Policing Services team based at the California Highway Patrol’s Santa Fe Springs office. The group handles traffic problems, abandoned cars, illegal parkers and other woes reported by residents.
There is a hot line specifically for traffic complaints.
On Friday, the team was on Norwalk Boulevard in response to a complaint about speeding at West Whittier and Katherine Edwards Middle School. The speed limit on Norwalk Boulevard is 40 mph, but it is 25 mph in the school zones when children are present.
The team also checked out complaints about speeding cars during the morning commute on Mines Boulevard between Norwalk Boulevard and Sorensen Avenue. They later looked for abandoned cars and illegal parkers in a West Whittier neighborhood west of the 605 Freeway.
By 10:30 a.m., the group had cited 17 drivers for speeding, one for having mechanical violations, one for not wearing a seat belt and six for parking violations. They also impounded a Nissan Sentra with expired registration.
“Almost every complaint we go to, residents come out and tell us, `You should be here every day,’ ” Quijada said.
Officer Armando Becerra said they’ve been on Mines Boulevard before. He’s seen folks try to pass slower vehicles using the bike lane.
He used a hand-held radar on Friday and drivers he pulled over didn’t have much to say after he showed them the radar’s reading.
Resident Ignacio Bejarano said drivers speed along Norwalk Boulevard all the time, especially in the afternoons and at night. He’s seen drivers hit 70 mph or more.
“At night it’s worse. You hear them fly by,” Bejarano said.
He said every time he sees the CHP out there, they catch people.
“They’re here all the time,” Bejarano said.
Resident Christine Ramirez thought three officers ticketing drivers was too much. One would be enough, she added.
She said she saw vehicles being pulled over that, to her, didn’t look like they were speeding. She also said officers should stop speeders endangering children, not someone going two miles over the speed limit.
“It’s like you blink, they’re being pulled over,” she said.
Ramirez drops off her children at West Whittier School every morning.
“As a parent my concern is getting my kids here safe. I will not send my first-grader across the street,” Ramirez said.
Delia Frausto is a resident whose job at the school includes jotting down license plates of cars breaking parking and traffic laws in front of the school. The plates are reported to the CHP.
“I’ve been called every name in the book by parents,” Frausto said.
She has put warning signs on cars and seen people turn on the windshield wipers to dislodge the paper.
The CHP Santa Fe Springs office responds to traffic incidents in the unincorporated county areas of West Whittier, South Whittier, Hacienda Heights and Rowland Heights. The station has had a COPS team since 1999, and the current team is about six months old.
“This team has the highest ticket writers in the station,” said CHP Officer Joe Zizi, the station’s public affairs officer.
So far, he said the traffic hot line has received about 150 traffic complaints from residents. The COPS team has worked about 80 percent of the calls, he added.
“The team is not responsible for any outside calls. This is their job,” Zizi said.
The COPS team is comprised of Sgt. Randy Barge and Officers Armando Becerra, Charles Quijada, Ben Ray Sotelo and Gerry Teesedale.
The traffic complaint hot line is (562) 868-0503, Ext. 239.
(562) 698-0955, Ext. 3026
