The Garfield Park Advisory Council and other area stakeholders recently began an effort to develop a strategy to address public safety in and around the iconic West Side park.
The first Garfield Park Community Town Hall was held recently at the park’s Gold Dome fieldhouse, 100 N. Central Park Ave. The next meeting will be held at the Gold Dome on Sept. 3 at 6 p.m. and is open to the public.
Attendees were split into tables assigned at random, and each group was asked to discuss three questions:
- What are the major issues facing the park and the community?
- What solutions have worked and what haven’t?
- Should “teen takeovers” be treated differently than groups of adults who party at the park?
In the ensuing discussion, the participants highlighted the importance of collaboration and sharing information to help access programs and resources. The groups were divided on what teen takeovers represented, and whether it is a force that can be harnessed or a negative trend that must be stopped.
Each Chicago park, beach and facility can have a Park Advisory Council, a group of volunteer residents that spearhead fundraising and work with the park staff to improve programs and activities. In practice, not all of them have active councils, and even active PACs tend to fly under the radar. Garfield Park Advisory Council has been one of the more active West Side PACs, holding regular community clean-ups and organizing activities.
Aside from advisory council members, the meeting included local and regional park staff, local Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) and his staff, police officers from the 11th Police District, members of various city departments, and representatives from organizations such as West Side Rising, Breakthrough Urban Ministries and Institute for Nonviolence.
In her introductory remarks, Carol Johnson, an advisory council member, emphasized that the goal isn’t just to talk about problems facing the park.
“That’s the whole point of this meeting – to talk about issues, but also to come up with solutions,” she said.
The issues that most of the groups brought up included littering, drug use and lack of resources for residents and visitors that experience homelessness and/or have mental health issues.
James Diggs, local resident and owner of Tidy Up Experts cleaning company, said the issue literally shows up on his block.
“There are people who are not like us, buying drugs in the parks,” he said. “A lot of people with mental health issues – they get no support.”
When it came to solutions that worked, several groups said that Shotspotter gun detection technology helped reduce crime and removing it made the situation worse. Some spoke in favor of more security cameras.
“We need more cameras on more poles,” Diggs said.
Other things participants thought worked included more parking enforcement, violence intervention programs, as well as resource pop-ups and more activities for youth.
There was also a broad consensus that the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) is useful, but there is more demand for their services than what they can reasonably handle.
Deon Powell, the Gold Dome park supervisor, voiced something that often comes up in discussions around public safety on the West Side – the desire to bring back “officer friendly.”
“No offense, but there are officers that are not friendly,” he told the police officers in the room.
Powell also recalled that when he was a supervisor at Altgeld Park near East Garfield Park’s eastern border, often homeless people hung out in the park because an overnight shelter was located nearby. Rather than trying to chase them away, he and his staff tried to get them to take advantage of the facility, inviting them to play basketball and work out.
What they found, Powell said, is that this gave them “a sense of ownership” of the park, which meant they were less likely to do anything disruptive.
“When you’re being friendly, and allow them an opportunity to engage, you get a positivity back,” he said.
Mike Floyd, the area manager for Chicago Park District’s Central Region, which includes the portions of the West Side south of North Avenue, said that there is only so much each park can do with the resources they have. This is why, he said, collaborations with local organizations such as Breakthrough are so valuable.
The groups disagreed on the teen takeover question. Some argued that teens aren’t doing anything adults aren’t doing – the difference is the scale. Others believed that there was a difference in “age and intention.”
Several argued that adults who party at the park tend to be local and wrap things up at night, while teens are attracted by social media posts and come from across the Chicago area, and tend to party late into the night. One participant described seeing rideshare vehicles drop off teen after teen on her block.
“With the teens, [the structure] is just not there,” Floyd said. “[Adults], they are at the same place. Teens, they can up at any point.”
Advisory Council member Keith Kelley argued that teen takeovers don’t represent chaos, but energy waiting to be harnessed. After all, the takeovers show that teens will show up if there’s a reason that they find compelling, he said.
“We need to talk to the young people, find out what they want,” he said. “They represent the power that we’re not organizing. If they can take over the parks, why can’t they take over the polls?”
As the meeting started to wrap up, organizers invited Ervin to speak. The alderman asked anyone who worked for a city department, a municipal agency or a nonprofit organization to raise their hands. The majority of hands went up.
“Seventy percent of the people are here for the job or whatever else they got going on,” Ervin said. “We need to engage the regular people. There is so much happening, so many resources coming to the community, and we got to share it with them, let them know what’s going on.”
