Looking to make LA's City Parks a place of refuge Prompted by a number of recent violent incidents, and an awareness that the residents of Los Angeles are uncomfortable in many of the City's parks, the Police Commission, led by Commissioner David Cunningham with the assistance of Commissioner Silvia Saucedo, has been creating a plan with the Department of Recreation and Parks for both short term and long term solutions.

Now that the summer is here, the short term plan includes a variety of elements. There will be an immediate deployment of high profile mounted police to about 20 designated parks. In addition 47 parks will shortly open "drop-in centers" or "safe houses" designed to help residents find security resources.

In providing park security, Los Angeles has a huge job on its hands ... there are 395 separate parks, recreation centers and beaches to patrol. The Department of Recreation and Parks has a security force itself, but it consists of a meager compliment of 35 unarmed Park Rangers and 10 supervisors. These officers can not possibly be held responsible for keeping nearly 400 parks and recreational facilities safe.

In fact, park security comes under the purview of LAPD itself, and each Division currently assigns a Park Safety Officer, usually a Sergeant, who, along with his or her several other important duties, is charged with coordinating the local plan to patrol parks and respond to requests for help.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Griffith Park, which is itself a Basic Car Area and thus has one dedicated black and white unit, LAPD can not provide officers devoted specifically to park security duties ... so this becomes the responsibility of the local basic car.

Long term plans will need to include designing a method of insuring park security on a less haphazard basis. The City may be divided into several regions, in which the Department can deploy specific patrol units and other resources dedicated specifically to keeping the parks, recreation centers and beaches safe.

But the community may well need to take an active role, too.

A community based response - "Adopt A Park"

Ernest E. Debs Park is almost 300 acres of largely open space, its rolling hills transversed with paths and fire roads. The flora and fauna and a nice hilltop pond attract many people to the area who wish to escape the asphalt and cement of the city ... but there are other "improved sections" too, with parking lots, picnic tables, bathrooms and sidewalks ... places where families and community groups can gather.

Several years ago, I belonged to a community group called "Friends of Debs Park" and I perceived that the park had a security problem. I looked into how security was being handled at that time, and ended up establishing relationships with the local Park Rangers, individuals from LAPD and members of the Fire Department. Sure enough, although all these groups had official security duties regarding the park, there were serious problems coordinating their efforts, and making them effective.

First of all, I found that only two Park Rangers were expected to patrol not only Debs but some 95 area facilities, an impossible task! Then, I discovered that the LAPD Basic Car responsible for patrolling the Debs area did not have a key to the several gates which block vehicle access to upper regions. Finally, I found that the Fire Dept required that fire roads and certain paths be maintained at a minimum width, so that their vehicles could have good access and be able to maneuver to combat brush fires.

It was obvious that if we wanted a safe and attractive park the community was going to have to become involved.

So, in effect, I adopted Debs, and devised a plan whereby local residents, park users themselves, could assist.

First, a campaign was instituted to explain the process of how security was currently being handled. To do this, a simple pamphlet-like flyer was produced, which listed contact names and phone numbers of Park Rangers, Police and Fire Department personnel.

Next, I created what I called an "Incident Report" form, a one page flyer that was distributed in a variety of ways ... at Neighborhood Watch groups, at community meetings in the areas surrounding Debs Park, as a form available on the local Improvement Association website, and through the "Friends of Debs Park" committee itself.

The pamphlet explained that the Incident Report was to be used to furnish information that did not rise to the level of an immediate need for assistance. The use of 911 was of course recommended if residents became aware of any emergency, anything violent, anything immediately threatening or to report a live fire.

But for other less serious, non-emergency things they'd use the form. Common uses were to report nuisances, reporting observations about not currently occurring activity, and reporting about quality of life issues.

The local residents were invited to use the form to send the information back to me so that our efforts could be coordinated and there could be some follow through (NOTE: this was in the days before the Senior Lead Officers were issued cell phones).

In other words, I offered to act as an informed liaison, and the reporting person could remain anonymous if they preferred.

The form was simplicity itself, but it did request the infomation forwarded be as specific as possible.

It looked something like this:

Residents could fax these reports to me, leave them off in my mailbox, or could simply call me and I'd fill the form out over the phone for them. If the Incident Report came to me by fax or in the mail, I'd phone them back, and I'd encourage each of them to give me permission to use them as a contact person for the report, but offered to keep them anonymous from law enforcement authorities, too.

There was an educational element to this too, because during each conversation I used the opportunity to explain a little bit about how local security was handled. I talked about how the Park Rangers, LAPD and the Fire Dept worked. Specifially I let them know how to get in touch with the Division and the SLO, and explained his relationship to the community.

The program generated Incident Reports on many different non-emergency topics. Excessive drinking, suspicious people, stolen cars, open fires, people sleeping in the park, illegal use of dirtbikes, grafitti on live trees were all reported ... and there were even a couple of occasions where local youngsters thought it would be OK to go "hunting" in the park, and took their 22 rifles up into the hills!

Anytime I helped a community member by transferring info to the proper authorities, I'd do follow up with them, letting the resident know the results of their reporting.

Over time we began to notice a marked improvement in the park, as residents began to feel a sense of "ownership" and responsibility about Debs.

Today Ernest E. Debs Park is a wonderful example of an inner-city park, so much so that the Audubon Society has a plan to establish a major Nature Center there. They will invite children from around the city to visit, attend classes and lectures, experience hands-on nature workshops and go on hikes through the parks 300 acres of rolling wild hills.

Securing the parks will take a combined effort

With the tiny unarmed Ranger Staff from Recreation and Parks, and LAPD already streached to the limit for resouces in every area, it stands to reason that the plan to ensure safe parks will have to be an effort which includes the community in a significant way. But it need not be overcomplicted.

Failrly quickly, a relatively simple program can be devised where volunteer residents, park users themselves, can become intimately involved. The program should include training about how to use already available resources, the issuing of a little specially prepared literature, and then the assigning of local parks, recreation centers and beaches to informed community members who live in the immediate proximity.

These trained volunteer park security liaiison residents would in turn engange their neighbors to use them as a resource to keep the parks safe, secure and attractive for the community.