How Can Park Slope Make Streets Safer?

At the first forum last night with the Park Slope Street Safety Partnership, a new group of community organizations and elected officials, hundreds of neighbors gathered to discuss ideas for safety improvements to our streets.

Various neighborhood leaders took time to speak, and The Weekly Nabe describes the mood during those speakers as moving from “angry to sympathetic to frustrated to hopeful.” Deputy Inspector Michael Ameri of our 78th Precinct, which received some flack after it issued zero speeding tickets during the moth of September, spoke about the challenges to pedestrian safety they’ve faced, particularly around the Barclays Center, Streetsblog notes. Council Members Brad Lander and Letitia James (who is also Public Advocate-elect) both vowed continued support to making streets safer. But the most moving statements came from the family of Sammy Cohen-Ecktein, the 12-year-old boy who was hit and killed by a van on Prospect Park West in October.

“It breaks my heart that we were not able to implement ’20’s Plenty’ sooner, as it would have prevented Sammy’s death,” his mother, Amy Cohen said, reports DNAinfo. “Clearly more needs to be done now.”

The group also launched an interactive map called Kids Rely on Safe Streets in the 78th Precinct yesterday where neighbors can note street-safety concerns in our area. You can mark spots where you’ve seen “unsafe behavior and conditions that threaten the safety of pedestrians, people on bikes, and people in motor vehicles,” and the plan is to help fix those issues.

If you’re interested in learning more about what the group has planned for the future, be sure to follow the Park Slope Street Safety Partnership on Facebook for more information as the campaign moves forward.