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Inside our parks are issues we can't ignore

By DIANE STEINLE
Published August 19, 2007

I had just parked my car at Crest Lake Park in Clearwater and opened the car door when the man approached.

"Got any spare change?" he asked.

Good grief, I thought, you're bothering me before I can even get out of the car?

I felt a little pang of guilt. I have a close relative who spent many years on the street - a smart and loving person who just couldn't control his consumption of alcohol - and I know that others have hit a rough financial patch in their lives, something that could happen to any of us.

Yet I couldn't help being annoyed. I just wanted to go to the park. I didn't want to be confronted. And I wondered if the other homeless people I saw sitting around the park would ask me for money, too.

It turns out that others also are concerned about Crest Lake Park, a lovely place on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard. Last week, park users and neighbors showed up at a City Council meeting to complain.

"It's really time to take a look at Crest Lake Park and do something about what is going on there," said Richard Sanderson.

He said the city crew that cleans the park in the mornings finds drug paraphernalia and used condoms. There is public urination, gang activity and littering, he said.

"I don't think any longer that it is a passive park," he said.

Christina Plyler, who lives across the street from the park, reported that people have sex on blankets or on top of the picnic tables. Two men were seen taking baths in the lake. Watch out for the alligators, dudes! At any one time, she said, there are 20 to 30 homeless people in the park, and 12 to 14 sleep there regularly. They even sleep on the playground equipment. Drug sales appear to be going on in the restroom, she said.

This is not the first time that there have been complaints about Crest Lake Park, but in the past the most persistent issue was illegal sexual activity in the men's restroom - it was even closed for a time.

However, the complaints at Tuesday's City Council meeting revealed a broader range of problematic activity in the park.

It isn't as if the city has done nothing to address the problems. The Police Department runs stings in the park bathroom from time to time, trying to stop illegal sexual activity there.

To discourage use of the park "furniture" for sleeping or copulating, the city has begun removing the 6-foot benches and replacing them with 4-foot benches with center dividers, and replacing the traditional long picnic tables with shorter tables with individual seats rather than benches, chained to concrete slabs so they can't be moved.

But residents said that isn't enough. They want something done about the illegal activities and the homeless, and they want a better police presence.

Deputy police chief Dewey Williams said the department is aware of the problems. From Jan. 1 through last week, the department had responded to 688 "events" in the park - that's an average of three a day - ranging from 911 calls to illegal parking to lewd and lascivious activity.

But park calls just aren't at the top of the busy Police Department's priority list, so the police and the Parks and Recreation Department are talking about whether the city needs to start a park patrol. Nothing is decided, but Williams said one approach could be to assign a police officer to a four-hour shift patrolling parks that have problems - that's 12 to 15 facilities, according to the city - and use community volunteers to keep a sharp eye on the parks the rest of the time.

That might reduce illegal activity in the parks, but it would not keep out the homeless people who are doing nothing illegal. Williams emphasized that a homeless person sitting in the park has as much right to be there as any other park user.

Even panhandling is not illegal, unless the area is posted as a No Solicitation zone or the person doing the begging uses intimidation tactics that would "put a reasonable person in fear of imminent harm," said City Attorney Pam Akin.

City Council member Carlen Petersen believes the most effective tool to deal with the growing number of transients in Crest Lake Park might be to send a social worker out with a police officer. The social worker could direct the homeless into programs that could help them. Clearwater once had such a team, Williams pointed out, but when the federal grant ran out, there was no more funding for the program.

Mayor Frank Hibbard said the City Council will schedule a work session to talk about ways to address the problems cropping up in city parks.

"We can't just let it fester," he said.

Diane Steinle can be reached at steinle@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4184.

[Last modified August 18, 2007, 21:44:45]