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WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES () — A man who says he’s making dangerous crosswalks safer by painting them was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department and cited for vandalism in Westwood Sunday afternoon.
“We want to make a change! I am so sick of walking around with my dog and having close calls, feeling like you enter the street, you enter the void.”
Jonathan Hale said he’s been painting code-compliant, but unpermitted crosswalks along with his team of volunteers with @PeoplesVisionZero to protest for safer streets and a better government.
The city says the paint is vandalism.
“We had painted these two legs when the police cruiser arrived, made us stop working,” Hale said.
The officer in a video of the arrest posted to Hale’s Instagram can be heard saying that painting the crosswalks was considered “vandalizing city property without a permit.”
Freshly painted, bright white zebra crosswalks that abruptly stop with a filled outline at the fairly steady, residential intersection of Kelton and Wilkins avenues in Westwood.
“When you see that.. definitely when driving. On a bike, as a pedestrian, it just feels like a safe place to cross,” said Brigid Bell.
“It is the state of the rolling stop, and you see that at this crosswalk quite a bit,” said Abby, a Westwood pedestrian.
Which is why Hale and the People’s Vision Zero picked it from a long list of targets on their to-do list.
He said they’ve “been working off areas where pedestrians have been hit or injured or killed in the past 10 years,” since 2015, the year L.A. committed to zero traffic deaths by 2025.
Instead, they’ve nearly doubled.
Hale, an avid city cyclist, has personally painted 14 crosswalks since May, including one at the intersection of South New Hampshire Avenue and 4th Street where a 9-year-old boy was hit and killed.
“I think we want a city that responds to the needs of its people in that sense and prioritizes these things as the way forward,” said Hale. “I don’t feel L.A. is doing that effectively.”
Mayor Bass’ office rescinded with a statement that said in part, “Despite communication about City, State, and Federal laws and parameters, Jonathan has chosen to continue to pursue his own course of action. Our office called him again today to offer to work together.”
Now with a $250 citation, Hale is prepared to try again to work with the city, and keep up the paint protest/
“That’s civil disobedience. You do the thing, you protest the laws you want to change and then you accept the consequences.”
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