Motorcycles on Sunset: Solutions?

By NATE BERG | Special to the Palisadian-Post

PART 2 OF A 2-PART SERIES

On Wednesday, April 29, right around 10 p.m., the scenic hills of Pacific Palisades were once again reverberating with the loud sounds of dozens of motorcycles.

It’s become an unofficial tradition Wednesday nights as large packs of motorcyclists ride down Sunset Boulevard through the Palisades, angering many in the community with their noise and, some say, dangerous behavior.

Residents have been notifying police about the issue for years, but despite enforcement efforts, the weekly rides continue.

“It really is a public nuisance,” says Palisadian Jack Allen. “And I think that the city attorney might be able to prosecute them as a public nuisance, just as they’ve done with gangs. Because these are gangs. They’re motorcycle gangs.”

That’s a label disputed by Bandit, leader of the Ruthless Ryderz, a motorcycle club that has been taking group rides through the Palisades on Wednesday nights for years. “We’re just out there riding, not causing any trouble,” he says. “It’s a public street. If you want to write me up, write me up.”

He acknowledges the fact that his club’s weekly rides – and the noise created by groups sometimes numbering more than 100 motorcycles – are unwelcome in the Palisades. “They don’t like us there,” he says. He recalls one ride several years back when community members were standing on the sides of Sunset throwing pebbles into the riders’ path, a dangerous interaction he says could have caused accidents.

He claims the club and its hundreds of members have no animosity toward the Palisades; they ride through the community because they like its curving road and its direct path to the ocean. But he also sees no reason to stop riding on Sunset Wednesday nights.

Many in the neighborhood are fed up with the weekly rides, the noise and the perceived dangerous behavior by reckless riders.

Some have even begun taking to the streets on Wednesday nights, armed with the cameras on their cell phones, to collect video evidence of the riders who they say are speeding, weaving and popping wheelies. They’ve expressed concern that law enforcement isn’t doing enough to solve the problem.

But stopping the motorcycle groups from riding through the Palisades is not as easy as it might seem, according to police.

IS THERE NO STOPPING THE SUNSET RIDERS?

“The Constitution applies to everybody. We’re not going to pick on them just because they’re on motorcycles,” says Sergeant Christopher Kunz, a motorcycle officer in the LAPD’s West Traffic Division. “We understand there’s a motorcycle problem, that the citizens perceive that they’re speeding and making excessive noise, and we will go up there to address it. But if they’re not doing anything wrong we can’t stop them.”

And more often than not, when police are present, the riders are indeed complying with the law. Kunz says that the LAPD has made numerous attempts in recent years to counteract the weekly ride, putting extra patrol officers on the street and checking the motorcyclists for both noise and speed. Kunz says that on two separate occasions in recent years the LAPD parked a trailer on Sunset that could monitor the speed of every vehicle passing by, and that only a few motorcyclists were in violation of the law.

Pacific Palisades Senior Lead Officer Michael Moore recalls a recent task force operation targeting the motorcyclists in which 109 citations were issued, only three of which went to motorcyclists.

“When we’re there they tend to behave themselves. So we end up putting 10 or 11 police officers up there and not getting as many tickets as you might expect,” Kunz says.

In terms of noise, Kunz says the motorcycles seem louder than they actually are. When officers have pulled over and tested motorcycles, they’re almost always in compliance with state noise regulations and the federal Noise Control Act, which allow the maximum idle exhaust noise from motorcycles to range from 80 to 92 decibels, depending on the year of manufacture.

The regulations only apply to individual vehicles, making enforcement of groups of vehicles difficult. Any motor driven vehicles operating on a public street or right-of-way in the city of Los Angeles are regulated under the state’s vehicle code.

That’s left many in the community calling for increased enforcement, but the police say it’s hard to justify the allocation of additional resources to what, in the larger context of the city, is a relatively low priority issue.

Kunz says the section of Sunset running through the Palisades carries about 10,000 vehicles per day, while other sections in West L.A. carry twice that or more. Higher traffic means a higher incidence of traffic violations and higher likelihood of accidents, he says.

Moore says that the officers patrolling the Palisades have their hands full, listing off the ongoing issues in the neighborhood: general complaints about speeding on Sunset, Palisades Drive and Bienveneda Avenue and failing to stop for stop signs at Bienveneda and El Hito Circle, among others. “The list goes on and on,” he says.

“We don’t have enough bodies to put on this motorcycle problem. But even if we did, our crime problems would skyrocket in other parts of West Los Angeles,” Moore says. “I’m not saying this is not a problem that needs to be looked at. It’s certainly something that LAPD is keeping an eye on. But there are greater problems out there.”

The Pacific Palisades Community Council can and does exercise some influence in calling for additional police resources, but that influence is limited, according to Richard G. Cohen, a Palisades resident who is also treasurer of the PPCC and a member of the West L.A. Community Police Advisory Board.

“Given the crime profile of the Palisades and the crime problems of the larger Los Angeles area, PPCC has been remarkably successful in advocating for our fair share of police resources,” he says. “Nonetheless, it is never enough to fully satisfy the needs of our geographically isolated community.”

A number of community members have raised the question of whether there is any way to legally prevent groups such as the Ruthless Ryderz from riding through the neighborhood, perhaps through a new ordinance in the city code. Some suggest a new law that prevents the use of motorcycles on Sunset in the Palisades between certain hours of the late night and early morning.

Such a law would need to be drafted by the City Attorney’s Office, in coordination with at least one member of the L.A. City Council. It would then be subject to votes in various city council committees and, upon positive recommendations from those committees, a mandatory public comment period.

Finally, the proposed legislation would be put to a vote of the full city council. In full, that process can last several months, and often longer. Changes to the noise regulations that govern motorcycles would need to be made at the state and federal levels, and those processes would likely be much more circuitous and lengthy.

SOLUTIONS FOR SUNSET? 

Tensions between communities and motorcycle groups can be resolved, according to Peter terHorst [Note: that is the correct spelling], spokesperson for the American Motorcyclist Association. He says that many motorcyclist clubs are eager to improve their reputation among non-motorcyclists who may just associate them with lawlessness and a 1960s image of the Hell’s Angels. Clubs “have almost always looked at what they can do to make their image better, to act responsibly, to be responsible,” terHorst says. “In group riding, etiquette is a big deal.”

He recommends community members try reaching out to the groups in question and opening a dialogue.

Whether residents in the Palisades – or members of the Ruthless Ryderz – are willing to engage in such a dialogue seems unlikely. While some in the community have taken to online forums calling for nail strips to be laid down across the roadway, others, such as Palisadian Ron Dean, are hoping to use video cameras to collect enough evidence of wrongdoing to spur law enforcement into action.

And while the police advise against outright vigilantism, Moore says any truly concerned citizen should consider becoming an LAPD reserve officer, a nine-month process with weekly training sessions.

“Get the training and get the uniform, and on Wednesday nights they can get in a black and white with the other reserve officers and make a difference out in the field,” he says.

Frustrated community members annoyed by the weekly noise do have some options. They can lobby state and federal officials to adjust the regulations in the Noise Control Act and the state vehicle code. They can take a more proactive approach to law enforcement by gathering their own evidence or even becoming a volunteer reserve officer. They can engage with the motorcyclists and try to reach some sort of compromise.

How likely it is that any of these options will work – and how willing community members will be to try them – is hard to predict.

“The bottom line is that this will likely continue to be a challenging issue going forward,” Cohen said. “The community will continue to press for enforcement and the motorcycles will continue to use the public roadways through our lovely, but annoyed, community.”