October Newsbites

***Fall Festival, October 20*** Please mark your calendars and plan to attend BAHA’s annual Fall Festival at Roscomare Circle Park (south end of Roscomare Road) on Sunday, October 20, 2024, from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Expect fun activities for the kids, refreshments, treats for all, and good conversations with your neighbors. Residents, young or young-at-heart, are welcome to attend in costume. This is a neighborhood activity, and all residents of Bel Air Hills are invited, regardless of BAHA membership or inclination to wear a costume. We hope to see everyone on October 20th!

***BAHA 2025 Membership Drive*** If you are not a current BAHA member, you can join now and get the rest of 2024 included free with your 2025 Membership. Suggested dues are $200, minimum dues are $175 (less than 50 cents a day!). Learn more about BAHA and membership benefits, and join with a few clicks in less than a minute at www.baha.la. Current BAHA members are welcome to renew now as well (and give yourself one less thing to remember).

***Roscomare Road Street Takeover*** As many of you already know, a large group of loud cars, many with illegally modified loud exhausts, drove up and down Roscomare Road on Saturday September 28th in the 11pm hour - waking residents and clogging Roscomare Rd. BAHA has been in communication with LAPD’s multi-agency (LAPD, LASD, and CHP) Street Racing Task Force, which also covers street takeovers, and has sent them the license plates of every car that passed by BAHA’s cameras between 10:30pm and midnight (along with the number of times that those plates have been seen in the neighborhood in the past 30 days, so they can distinguish between residents and street takeover participants). In addition, the Taskforce gave us some additional information about the incident, and what to do if it ever happens again (which is hopefully less likely since BAHA gave the Task Force their license plate numbers!).

• The Roscomare Road incident was one of numerous street takeovers that took place that night, including one at Sepulveda and Moraga, and that caused law enforcement to be spread thin. However, LAPD’s Street Racing Task Force, assisted by CHP and LAPD West LA Patrol, did respond - resulting in one vehicle being impounded and several citations (although it is unclear if that was for the Roscomare Road incident or the Moraga one) and the offenders leaving the neighborhood.
• If it is any consolation, the particular group that gathered in our neighborhood is a more “upscale” group with more expensive cars than the typical offenders, so theoretically less likely to engage in other crimes.
• Another positive - we are ideally situated for a law enforcement response should this happen again, because we are close to the line between the WLA and Valley units of the Task Force, so either unit can respond.

• Even if the very loud cars are not racing or blocking traffic, LAPD can give tickets to those with illegally modified loud exhausts, which not only result in fines up to $1000 but also in the requirement that the offender have their car checked every year or 6 months by a Referee Center to ensure that they remain in compliance.

• IF this does happen again, here’s what to do:
  • DO NOT CALL 911!!!!! (unless there is an immediate danger to life and limb)
  • Instead, everyone please immediately email both of the following LAPD Taskforce members on the same email, with the relevant information (their emails are monitored 24/7 but PLEASE DO NOT contact them unless there us a street racing takeover in progress):
    • Lt. Jesse Garcia ([email protected])
    • Sgt. Arnold Castellanos ([email protected])
    • SAVE THOSE EMAIL ADDRESSES where you can find them!
  • In addition to emailing the above Task Force members, you can also email the Senior Lead Officer for our neighborhood, James Allen ([email protected]), and/or call LAPD's non-emergency number at 877-275-5273.

BAHA members will receive additional information from BAHA's security cameras on this incident (because their dues pay for the cameras).

***Prolific Porch Pirate*** Thanks to a BAHA member who is also a member of BAHA’s Virtual Neighborhood Watch, and to BAHA’s advanced capability security cameras, BAHA has discovered that a particular package thief is visiting our neighborhood frequently. While BAHA members will receive additional information on the make, model and license plate of the vehicle, the number of times this thief has been in the neighborhood in the past 30 days and his preferred package hunting hours, (because their membership dues pay for the cameras that produced this information), everyone should try not to leave packages out where they can be stolen.

Amazon and UPS allow you to schedule package delivery for days when someone will be home, inexpensive doorbell cameras can alert you to when a package has been dropped off, secure package lockboxes can be installed, and you can also rent a mailbox at Bel Air Mail Room at 2337 Roscomare Rd and have your packages delivered there. BAHA members even get a 15% discount on mailboxes (and everything else) at the Bel Air Mailroom.

If you have street-facing security cameras and would like to help make our neighborhood safer by joining BAHA’s Virtual Neighborhood Watch, you can learn more about the program and sign up HERE. You do not need to be a member of BAHA to join the Virtual Neighborhood Watch, but we highly recommend it.

Do you think you might have been a victim of this prolific porch pirate? If you have had a package stolen since September 13, please file a police report with LAPD ( you can do it online at https://www.lapdonline.org/file-a-police-report/ ) and also email BAHA at [email protected] with the address, date and time of the theft, and the police report number.

***BAHA Members-Only Private Nextdoor Group*** BAHA has set up a Nextdoor private group only for BAHA members. (Nextdoor is a popular online social media service geared toward neighborhood communication but with a wide coverage area). Invitations to join will be going out to BAHA members shortly. We hope this BAHA Members-Only group will serve as a sort of online bulletin board – a way for BAHA Members to safely communicate with other BAHA Members about such things as getting/giving recommendations for everything from architects to window washers, household help, child/pet playdates, walking/hiking/biking buddies, to safely buy/sell/borrow/lend items without fear of an ax murderer showing up on your doorstep, and more. The group will be monitored, and the things that can make Nextdoor an unpleasant experience will not be allowed (e.g. politics, trolling, animal rescue pleas for animals outside our neighborhood, advertising, etc.)

***Santa Monica Mountains and Measure H*** BAHA has a policy that it will not get involved in political issues, or other issues, that are not specific to our neighborhood in particular and, on certain issues, hillside communities in general. This includes providing information on those issues/elections in Newsbites. One issue on this November’s ballot does satisfy the criteria for inclusion in Newsbites – Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority (MRCA) Measure H. We are not providing a recommendation on how you should vote on Measure H, just the information from official sources so you can learn about it.

Here is the official full text of Measure H, including a map of the area covered by Measure H:

Full Text of Ballot Measure H.pdf
H-Boundaries-1.pdf

And here is the official Impartial Analysis from LA County Counsel:

Impartial Analysis of Measure.pdf