Council Recap: Security guards, hummingbirds

Published on September 27, 2023

At their Tuesday evening meeting, Lakewood City Council Members added a fourth security guard patrol to the city’s overnight patrol program.

The program was started in April 2022 as part of the city’s “Neighborhood Safety Enhancement Program” to do all that Lakewood could at the local level to address an increase in catalytic converter thefts and other property crimes that were impacting cities across California. 

The safety enhancement package has also included paying for more Deputy Sheriff patrol time in Lakewood, to the maximum that is possible given the limits on the number of Sheriff’s personnel in recent years. 

The security guard program was meant to provide more public safety eyes and ears on the streets of Lakewood, especially overnight. The patrols have proved to be effective based on crime trends staying relatively flat in Lakewood while other cities experienced significant increases. Community response has also been positive, with residents indicating they felt safer knowing the security patrols were keeping a watchful eye overnight.

The fourth patrol will be a citywide rover to add to the focus on any areas that need extra attention.

In other action, the City Council approved the introduction of a city ordinance that clarifies that the normal feeding of hummingbirds and similar birds has always been and remains legal in Lakewood.

There had been some misunderstanding on social media in Lakewood that the city’s longstanding public nuisance language against the mass feeding of pigeons, which can create public health and quality of life impacts on neighbors, could be construed to not allow the feeding of hummingbirds.

At their Sept. 12 meeting, Lakewood’s city attorney emphasized that the longstanding ordinance and its 2023 grammatical updating did not apply to hummingbirds and similar non-nuisance bird feeding. But the City Council directed staff to return with legislative language to explicitly clarify that. The Sept. 26 introduction of the ordinance is expected to be followed by the council’s final approval of the clarification at its next meeting in October.