At the same time Teresa Lang was walking home from a friend’s house before midnight on Dec. 9, laptop in her hands, her neighbor was being held up at gunpoint outside her house on 41st Street.
Lang woke up to the news the next day through a Facebook group for El Porto residents.
“I could’ve easily been the victim of the crime myself,” said Lang.
She started a Change.org petition that day asking the city council and Manhattan Beach Police Department to increase foot and vehicle patrols in the area “and work with community members to strengthen existing local neighborhood watch programs, in an effort to increase safety and to combat the perception of El Porto, and North Manhattan more generally, as an easy target.”
As of Dec. 22, it had 283 signatures.
“It felt like there was a lot of momentum in the community wanting to see action,” said Lang. “I personally don’t feel safe. I took it upon myself to create a space for people to express they don’t feel safe to our elected officials and police chief.”
Police Chief Eve Irvine addressed the petition at the Dec. 15 council meeting, saying the department had increased patrols by marked and unmarked cars in the area before it saw the petition.
A couple of El Porto residents who spoke at the meeting said they hadn’t noticed any more cars. But since the meeting, Lang said the cars had become very visible.
Several of the El Porto residents had other requests, such as increasing street lighting and installing security cameras or license plate readers.
A camera from the restaurant where the armed robbery victims had been just before the crime appeared to have caught the car, although heavy fog made it hard to read the license plate. Lang hoped that cameras installed by the city would be angled correctly and high enough quality to solve the problem. The car was reportedly in the area for up to half an hour before the crime.
At the council meeting, resident Bob Sievers asked for cameras at the entry and exit points of El Porto, and possibly at the top of each street.
“Catching these people is important, but they would also, I believe, act as a deterrent if prominent and well marked,” he said.
Another resident who said he used to live next to the house outside of which the robbery took place called the incident a “wake-up call.”
“Being that we are one of the easiest entry points into Manhattan Beach, we would like to get some traffic cameras that might be able to see coming onto Highland [Avenue] from Vista [del Mar] because it’s a straight shot,” he said. “Once people get out of Manhattan Beach, they’re in El Segundo and then they’re gone.”
Mayor Mark Burton, who missed the Dec. 15 meeting because of surgery, proposed installing cameras at his swearing-in ceremony in July, when he outlined his vision for the future of the city. He recently brought the idea back at a city council meeting before the robbery, asking staff to study it for future consideration by the council.
Burton also suggested creating a database of all public and private surveillance cameras throughout the city that police could use to solve crimes and increasing foot patrols throughout the city.
Although Lang said she was pleased by the response by the council and police chief, she’s waiting to gather more signatures before formally submitting the petition after the new year.
“I want to maintain the momentum,” she said. “It’s part of why I started the petition—to show that a number of people are concerned for the longterm.” ER
