crackdown on those individuals speeding and breaking the law and doing things that could create these kinds of accidents. no one wants to see the accidents on the side of the road, no one wants to experience going to a crime scene on the road knowing your loved one has been hit by a car or sadly tragically killed. i remember years ago on turk street and laguna, when a lot of us were hanging out and just kind of enjoying the weather, it was a really nice hot time, like in the fall and my god son was crossing the street on turk at the intersection of turk and buchanan where there s no stoplight and he was hit by a car. we watched as you flew in the air and thought oh my god, oh my god, just to see it, and had no control over what was going to happen was devastating. and luckily he had minor injuries, luckily he survived, and i just really felt strongly, we have to do better as a city. we have to do better with the vehicles that are speeding on our streets. we have to do better
hear as well as some other members of the community. so for our elderly, let s pay attention. let s help them in terms of paying attention to our roadways when we are driving and bicycling, that is a huge issue in our city. our outreach is a huge priority and again we use traffic stops as a way of outreach but we also have many public campaigns to remind drivers and pedestrians and bicyclists of their responsibilities when they are often the roadways. the partnership we talk about between the mta, city government, board of supervisors, fire department, the department of public health, it really is a team effort to realize the vision of zero fatalities. i remind you, look at where we were and where we are. this vision will be a reality, it will be a reality and we ll work together to make that happen. i thank you for your time. families thank you for being here and remember, vision zero is about all of us. thank you. (applause) thank you chief. the chief made reference that
well, all right. actually noted. real quick. for next year rates and benefits this is just a pre notice, i d like to see him look in to improving the hearing aid situation. i think it s archaic that you get one hearing aid every two years and it is possible that as soon as you get a new one your old one dies. i d like to see something like three years for two new ones and maybe a co pay back if you have to get another one in between that and half of it a quarter of it would be nice. hearing aid benefit. number two, cater aks which i am now experience and i think it s also a shame that with our insurance they start out, this is what you get for a cataract operation and now if you have $5,000 more for each eye you get the best. it s so sad that there s something in between our insurance that can t be halfway up to that $5,000 per eye. and then the third one, seeing now we re doing so well with delta dental, possibly a two-tier dental system i know it s a lot to work a
road, no one wants to experience going to a crime scene on the road knowing your loved one has been hit by a car or sadly tragically killed. i remember years ago on turk street and laguna, when a lot of us were hanging out and just kind of enjoying the weather, it was a really nice hot time, like in the fall and my god son was crossing the street on turk at the intersection of turk and buchanan where there s no stoplight and he was hit by a car. we watched as you flew in the air and thought oh my god, oh my god, just to see it, and had no control over what was going to happen was devastating. and luckily he had minor injuries, luckily he survived, and i just really felt strongly, we have to do better as a city. we have to do better with the vehicles that are speeding on our streets. we have to do better with our infrastructures and when people push back on me about the improvements and bike infrastructure and all of those things we need to do, we have to make our roads safe.
property crime as well. we had 30,980 properties last year which was 24% increase over the year before. when we looked at a five-year trend, we went from 15,000 in 2012 to 30,000 car break ins last year which is upward trajectory we need to turn around. we ve added some things to our reptoire, including standing up, a general crimes unit in november. that consisted of 48 investigators, 10 of which are dedicated to property crimes. they have city-wide responsibility. they work with the station investigators to identify crews that are multi-jurisdictional inside and outside of the city. in addition, when we enhance our foot beats in august, that s when we started to see the increase in homicide, not to say that s the answer but we think it will help us both in our property crime efforts and our violent crime efforts. and then we are enhancing our prevention campaign. park smart is the name of our campaign. we ve been doing this for the last several years. this campaign was crea