The Weekly Newspaper of Torrance
Herald Publications - Torrance, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hawthorne, Lawndale, & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 8, No. 6 - February 8, 2018
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This Issue
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Professionals.......................8
Classifieds............................4
Crossword/Sudoku.............4
Food.......................................7
Legals....................................9
Pets......................................12
Police Briefs........................9
Real Estate...................10-11
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Weekend
Forecast
A New Bocce Ball Bench Mark
Kiwanis Buy Bocce Ball Bench
TerriAnn in Torrance
By TerriAnn Ferren
Last Friday evening I joined Mayor
Patrick J. Furey, Councilman Milton S.
Herring, I, and local citizens as the Torrance
Kiwanis Club formally presented
a plaque commemorating the dedication
of benches they donated for the bocce
ball court in Columbia Park. The 52-acre
Columbia Park, located at 4045 190th
St., is the largest park in Torrance and
boasts a softball field, sand volleyball
court, horseshoe pits, and, of course, the
bocce ball courts among its amenities.
Originally the park had a basketball court,
but that is gone now and in its place sit
the bocce ball courts. To make it more
convenient for games, the Torrance Kiwanis
stepped up and donated beautiful
green benches to the city.
Mayor Patrick J. Furey told me, “I
think it is fantastic that the Kiwanis have
stepped forward with the benches. It really
makes everything so much easier for the
viewers to watch the bocce games as they
progress and they fit in so nice, it really
looks like they were designed that way to
begin with. It just adds to the ambiance
of the bocce courts and now we will have
more people wanting to do it.”
To help celebrate this special event, the
Kiwanis challenged the FTEA (Friends of
Torrance Exceptional Athletes), run by Phil
Duthie, to a rousing game of bocce ball.
Kiwanis member and Park and Recreation
Commission Chair Dr. Laurie Love told
me, “We have been involved with FTEA
Friday
Sunny
72˚/56˚
Saturday
Mostly
Sunny
66˚/55˚
Sunday
Partly
Cloudy
69˚/54˚
Members of the Torrance Kiwanis Club gathered in front of the sign dedicating the benches the group recently donated to the bocce ball court in Columbia Park. For more details, be sure to read this week’s
TerriAnn in Torrance column below. Photo by TerriAnn Ferren.
Council Approves New Police Cameras
By Cristian Vasquez
A unanimous vote by members of the
Torrance City Council approved a purchase
order with Pileum Corporation in the amount
of $1,548,019.05 for 50 in-car camera sets,
222 body-worn cameras and 66 modems to
be used by the Torrance Police Department.
Tuesday night’s vote consolidates a body
camera pilot project (FEAP 918) and the Body
and Vehicle Cameras and Mobile Computer
Devices (FEAP 958) into one single FEAP to
be renamed FEAP 958.
“The five-year contract that we are entering
is fixed pricing which will include all of the
hardware, the modems, the cameras in the cars,
on the officers, and a video storage on a cloud
-- which is huge because we aren’t going to
be locally hosting anything,” said Communications
Division Commander Lieutenant Mark
Athan. “It will be up on Amazon cloud with
unlimited storage.”
The police department expressed its need
to fully integrate its field personnel and patrol
vehicles with a video camera system that would
be effective and assist in record-keeping. In July
2015, the City Council approved $50,000 in
general funds for the body camera pilot (FEAP
918) to anticipate costs related to a two-year
testing and evaluating process. However, the
funds are still available since all of the testing
and evaluating was conducted at no cost. On
May 17, 2016, the Council approved more
general funds -- $1.9 million for FEAP 958
-- providing the resources for the department
to purchase in-car and body-worn cameras.
Yet $500,000 of those funds remain unused,
while the rest is set aside for a projected future
appropriation.
“The way the project started was quite
frankly staff putting together a user group and
asking what do we want? What technology
is available? And how do we want to move
forward with this?” said Athan. “There was
a user group that was brought in to look at
the technologies that were available at that
time. So the reason we are a couple of years
out right now is because we were waiting for
some technology to catch up.”
When the search for this technology began
back in 2015, vendors offered either an in-car
solution or a body-cam solution, but not both.
The department didn’t consider having two
vendors to be ideal since it would require having
to integrate two different technologies from two
separate vendors. During the search, four vendors
participated in 60-day trials with the department
by installing body cameras on officers. It was
then that the department noticed that most of
the body cameras used were externally mounted
ether with a clip or through a magnet, which
commonly resulted in the camera falling off if
the officers found themselves in an altercation.
Or, they were being stripped off by seatbelts.
“We decided to find the best solution and
what you have here is an external vest where
the body camera is mounted inside the vest,
inside a case,” said Athan. “The camera is
actually an Android cell phone that is mounted
inside the vest.”
Other features offered by the Pileum Corporation
include not having to physically dock
the camera to upload recordings, as images
will save wirelessly. In addition, officers can
be tracked up to 1,500 feet away from their
patrol vehicles via GPS, providing an additional
layer of officer safety. This feature
will include officers on motorcycle. Pileum
Corporation will receive $500,000 the first year
and $257,397.50 the following four years, in
addition to $18,429.05 in self tax on year one.
“I think this shows the patience and investigative
skills in looking to find the best item
and it has paid off so far,” said Mayor Patrick
See City Council, page 8
See TerriAnn in Torrance, page 6