With the once-desolate Los Angeles River emerging as a popular recreation area, city officials decided to create a system of place markers and computer mapping that would help emergency crews pinpoint the location of people who call needing help.
As part of a pilot project, the painted markers would have been placed on both sides of the river from Los Feliz Boulevard to Fletcher Drive. But 2 1/2 years after the idea was first proposed, the mapping system remains incomplete and has become the subject of much finger-pointing and confusion.
Apartment manager Tony Taylor, 59, learned this in December when he came across the body of a man hanging from a sycamore tree in one of the pocket parks along the river.
Taylor said a city official had told him a week earlier that the location system was in place. He glanced at the walking path for the nearest marker and called a police dispatcher, giving her the mile location "22.8."
"She had no idea what I was talking about," Taylor said. "The markers meant absolutely nothing to her."
The markers on the east side of the river were put in place more than a year ago. But they have not been connected to the Los Angeles Police Department's computer locator system. On the west side of the river, which includes a bicycle path, the markers have yet to be painted.
Gina Shovan, an LAPD senior lead officer whose beat includes the Los Angeles River from Colorado Boulevard to Fletcher Drive, said the signage program would be a great aid to law enforcement. The blue-and-white markers, which have a mile number and depict a heron, would essentially act as new addresses along the river.
"In case of emergency, it would be extremely useful not only to help dispatch but the officers," Shovan said. "Especially with the influx of new officers into the division, it would be nice to know there's a number out there that will help officers respond quicker, rather than relying on a guessing game."
Taylor is not the only person who thought the program had already been launched.
Councilman Ed Reyes, who chairs the council's Ad Hoc River Committee, said he found out only on Monday that calling police with the marker numbers was futile.
"To be honest, I thought it was already done. I saw the markers when I was riding a bike with my kids one day" during the summer, Reyes said, adding that he hopes the system will be up and running in two weeks.
