NYPD GETS ON BOARD

Now everyone is getting on board. Yesterday it was Brewer's Chief of Staff, today it's the Commanding Officer of NYPD's Central Park Precinct. I think it's safe to say this is real momentum.

But it was a dreary day on the crosswalk. I went down early, like 8 am,  to see if there were any material changes at the crosswalk but there weren't and I went home to make my wife's breakfast and lunch, and pack her off to work at the Empire State building for the day and then walk the pup.

I shot a lot of really routine stuff from 9:52 am to 10:13 am and again from 1:40 pm to 2:32 pm. Traffic was really light in the crosswalk because of the weather.

I went home at about 3, began checking on the Community Meeting of NYPD Central Park, and learned it was tonight at 7 pm. So I quickly posted an update alerting our signatories of the meeting. 

After puppy-walking and the ceremonial feeding, I made my way to NYPD by bus to Central Park Precinct at 86th and Transverse Rd well ahead of the 7 pm starting time. A lot of regulars were there as well as Roger Thomas, the Community Council's President, who is also the leader of an auxiliary unit of NYPD. 

After we all signed in, Roger gave a presentation, followed by Commanding Officer Gallagher and then a give-and-take from the audience. I waited to be close to the last because I could see I would dominate the time allotment.

By the time I got called, I had already changed my game plan. I brought a 2-minute question but the previous participants had embarked on extended, meaningless discussions, and I knew I had a bigger stage than I had imagined. So I started out with softball questions to everyone, including the NYPD officers present, which I counted to be three, plus the head of the auxiliary police force, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE SPEED LIMIT IN OUR CROSSWALK AT 63RD AND WEST DRIVE IS?

Not a single one of them did. To their credit, the police officers present, including Gallagher, proffered a guess less than the 20 MPH speed limit in the park but not one of them got it right.

After that, I pretty much owned the floor.

I was in command of my facts and the audience was attentive. Gallagher was intently interested and said he would begin by reading the file on Jill Tarlov. He promised to get back to me by email about accident statistics in our crosswalk. This is much better than dealing with FOIL.

During Gallagher's presentation, he mentioned a weekly meeting with CPC and I threw in Roger Mosier's name and he responded that it was Roger that he dealt with on a weekly basis. This is really good momentum, the ball is rolling now.

Our team is assembling and we are all doing our little parts. We can and will get this done by Labor Day.

Brewer is in, NYPD is in, CPC is in, YMCA is in, ECFS is in, SEC is in. We all want this crosswalk to be safe for our families and kids by Labor Day. SAFE BY LABOR DAY!

Tonight's screengrab is the neighborhood speed demon at his slow speed of 29 mph cruising thru our crosswalk on red.