Paradise Cove: Dangerous Intersection and Beach Drinking = TROUBLE

As I write this, a helicopter is hovering over Paradise Cove which has been a train wreck for the past few weekends as it is every summer. Bad stuff is going on according to neighbors – too many people, unbearable PCH backups and big boozing on the sand (I found photos on the web if you have doubts).  

This has been a bone of contention for far too long. When I was a public safety commissioner, we spoke of the mess at Paradise Cove far too often without a resolution. This is a major public safety issue, peeps. It is a growing problem despite the blowback I got from certain council members and the sheriff.

When will the city take public safety seriously?  Someone suggested a DUI checkpoint on PCH by Paradise Cove. That ain’t going to happen because by law, this has to be posted and, oh, our original contract to do DUI checkpoints was not renewed (though we did an emergency one with the sheriff to fill in some holes). Why?

Well to the best of my knowledge, residents complained when the one at Webb Way and PCH backed up Malibu resident commuter traffic one lovely evening.  So our city manager, bowing to the resident idiots who did not want us to catch drunks and bad guys, moved the checkpoint to a side street. Number of bad guys caught dropped precipitously and our grant was not renewed because the numbers were too low compared to other cities. Scrambling to cover the loss, our city manager and the Sherriff’s Dept. cobbled together another grant that would include some DUI checkpoints and education – there was an emergency signing at one of our public safety commission meetings but darned if I can find those particular commission minutes.  In addition to the city website being impossible to search, December 2011 public safety minutes have decided to take a hike. “File Not Found. We're sorry, but we're unable to locate the file you've requested. Please return to the previous page and try again.”

There is an item on the June 2012 Public Safety Commission agenda about a meeting with Paradise Cove Mobilehome Park and Paradise Cove Beach Café regarding remedies for safety issues at those locations. The minutes have not been posted but from my vantage point, it was another boondoggle because nothing has changed.

So what do you think the city should do about the Paradise Cove problems?