A Hole in our Heart & Soul
After 26 years here, Pat Dixon is leaving Redwood Shores. Most of you know Pat only from her “Swan Lady” column in the PILOT. Pat has been a tireless advocate for this community in her service on many Boards and Commissions in San Mateo County. I cannot say more than was in the Proclamation from the RWC Council honoring her service. A copy is on RSCA.org: Redwood City Honors Pat Dixon
Pat is leaving a big hole in the heart and soul of Redwood Shores.
New System for Taking Police Reports…
Like almost every agency in every city in California, our Police Department is working to find new ways to continue to provide basic services more efficiently, even with declining resources. This means finding ways to free officers from lower-priority tasks so they are available for more important duties.
One plan already in place is a voluntary system that would let you “self-report” minor property crimes without the need to have a police officer tied up taking the report. The criteria are that:
- the property crime is not in progress,
- the property loss is less than $10,000, and
- no suspect information is available.
Examples of crimes that could be self-reported would be petty theft, vandalism, hit & run collisions, and auto burglaries. Again, self-reporting without the need to have a police officer on-site to take the report is entirely voluntary. When you make the report yourself, that report becomes an “official police report” and goes into the police crime reporting system just as if a sworn officer had taken the report. You get a copy of the “official police report” for insurance or other purposes, again, just as if a sworn officer had taken the report.
You still have the option of having an officer come and make the report if you wish. But when you make the report yourself, you free up that officer for other duties. More complete information is available at http://www.redwoodcity.org/police/ . Look for “Report Crime On-Line” in the lower left hand corner.
…and for Seeing Crime Report Activity On-line
One of the comments we received in our winter 60 Second Survey was “ability to know about crime in RWS through some pro-active mechanism”. This is an issue RSCA has raised with RWC Police for the past few years. By the time your read this, you should be able to go to CrimeReports.com and search “Redwood City” to see crime reports for the past month. There are tools to the right that will let you select what type of crimes you want to see on the map.
This is a system that the RWC Police command staff are now using, and you can see that many of our neighboring cities are also using this system. While crime report “media logs” have been available on the RWC Police web site for some time, this new tool is a great step forward in increasing the visibility of criminal & police activity in our City. Kudos to the department for making this information more easily available to the public.
Why We Want Your Email
RSCA is required to notify all Shores residents and businesses of specific events like our Annual Business meeting each year. It costs us at least 45¢ to send a postcard notice, and even more if we need to send a letter. We now have over 5,400 residents and almost 700 business in the Shores, so those mailing costs are significant. It costs us much less an one penny each to send an email notice.
We currently have over 600 Shores residents & businesses on our email list, and we use our email list to make sure you are aware of all our community events during the year. If you would like to be on our email list, simply go to RSCA.org and under “Feedback”, click on the “Join our email list” button to sign up.
OUR PRIVACY POLICY:
Your information is for use only by Redwood Shores Community Association in contacting you. We do not share, sell, or provide our contact list to any other person or organization.
RSCA’s 60 Second Survey
We do appreciate all of you who made time for our “60 Second Survey” of issues affecting the Shores, and we especially appreciated those who took time to offer additional comments. The results were not surprising, with the highest concern naturally being the levee certification, with public safety issues a close second.
One responder had this suggestion: “It would be nice to hear different view points from the pilot. It seem like the same voices say the same message. How about allowing others to voice their opinion, especially since we don’t all think the same way?”
We agree, and we would like to hear from you. If you would be interested in writing a column for the PILOT, either one time or on a regular basis, simply contact me or PILOT Editor Carol Mertens at
— Harris Rogers, RSCA President