Public Parks Now Patrolled By Private Security
Charlotte NC September 28, 2021
POI Staff
One of the areas of policing in many cities that have fallen victim to the Defund the Police movement, budget cuts, and staffing shortages, are local parks.
In many communities across the country, it has been the local city and county law enforcement agencies who have patrolled area parks to keep them safe.
Now, because of staffing shortages, many police chiefs admit that at times, they can barely respond to the calls for service coming into their dispatch centers and officers have little time for routine patrols of business property, schools or parks.
Sandy Grimes of Charlotte North Carolina loves to take her children to the parks several times a week. They really love to explore and run around and just be kids outdoors she said.
But, she has noticed a lack of officers on the walking trails or driving through the parks.
CMPD recently announced that they have increased bike patrols in the parks and that Charlotte Mecklenburg parks have park rangers that patrol. But those park rangers are not police officers, and they are not armed. Grimes says she hasn’t seen a park ranger for months.
Salt Lake City’s police chief says the city’s parks aren’t getting the attention they need despite having a dedicated bike squad to patrol them.
Chief Mike Brown told the city council recently that it all comes down to the department being short-staffed amid a huge increase in calls for service.
The city’s park bike squad was formed in 2019 to focus exclusively on the city’s roughly 100 parks, with five officers and one sergeant spending four days a week – especially weekends – on patrol.
But Brown told the council Tuesday evening the squad can’t devote the attention required because those officers find themselves helping deal with a backlog of calls.
“We are handling more and more calls for service,” Brown said, noting calls are up 29 percent compared to this time last year. There has also been a large jump – 104 percent – in calls related to transient issues, the chief said.
Brown said the city’s parks deal with their share of problems including drug use and distribution, illegal camping, and some violence. He noted police are doing their best to crack down on problems where they arise, and the department is hiring more officers.
In the City of Nashville Tennessee, Metro Nashville Police do patrol their local parks, but the city also employs a full-time force of park law enforcement officers.
The Park Police provide police services to Metro’s park system. They are tasked with patrolling and responding to calls for service within the 115 parks that encompass almost 11,000 acres of land in Davidson County. The officers utilize patrol cars, sport utility vehicles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), horses, bicycles, and foot patrols to aid in this task. They also investigate crimes that occur on Park property and conduct undercover operations. Officers have the same powers of arrest and duties as a Metro Police officer while in the Parks, but they are not employed by metro police. Instead, they are employed by the Department of Parks and Recreation.
Some cities have hired private security officers to patrol their parks.
In 2020, Seattle Washington was one of 14 park systems that hired security officers to patrol their public parks.
After city crews cleared a camp of protesters and homeless people from Cal Anderson Park Tuesday, the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation hired a private security firm to “have a presence in the park overnight and to continue to remind people that the park remains closed,” a department spokesperson confirmed in an email Wednesday.
Cal Anderson Park has been officially closed since June 30, which the city says is necessary to make repairs from ongoing protests. However, the park is regularly used by people exercising and walking dogs and has become a hub for some protesters. People living homeless have also long slept in the park.
The City of Fresno California also counts on a local private security company to patrol their park system. The city uses a combination of city police and private security to reduce vandalism, drug activity, and illegal camps of homeless persons.
Other cities using private security include Burlington VT., Detroit MI, Tempe AZ, and Long Island NY, and Waukegan IL.
