New Nighttime Incident in Northridge : Park Vandalism Frustrates Neighbors

Someone took a 3 a.m. joy ride through a Northridge park in a stolen tractor Tuesday, knocking down two trees and part of a chain-link fence.

The latest aggravation at the park prompted a neighbor, J. D. Drury, to air his frustration.

“This is nauseating,” Drury, 58, said as he walked through the 10-acre city park across the street from his home on Swinton Avenue. “We’ve had problems here for years, and I think they’re getting worse.”

The park is the Nordhoff Adaptive Park near Nordhoff Street and Woodley Avenue. Drury said that, like many of his neighbors, he has complained for years about teen-agers’ gathering there at night. Since the park was created five years ago, Drury said, the gatherings have plagued the neighborhood with noise, traffic and uneasiness.

Neighbors successfully petitioned the city for more street lights and fencing on the sides and rear of the park.

Park’s Quiet Ends at Night

Greg Smith, an aide to City Councilman Hal Bernson, said the neighbors also helped prompt a crackdown on drug use in the park last year.

During the day the park is a quiet place with a city program for handicapped adults.

At night, neighbors say, it is something else altogether. And, after the police broke up a noisy gathering of 60 to 70 beer-drinking adults Monday night, the front-loading tractor, stolen from a construction site, made its destructive foray through the park. The park manager, Polly Schuster, estimated damage at $3,000.

Schuster said whoever took the tractor dumped sod on picnic tables and drove back and forth on the lawn, tearing it up.

‘Isolated Sort of Thing’

George Steigel, a maintenance supervisor for the city, said the incident struck him as “an isolated sort of thing” that is not likely to happen again.

But to Drury and several of his neighbors, it is ominous when combined with recurring reports of everything from marijuana use to public urination.

“Maybe that’s why it’s so frustrating,” said Walt Mitchell, a 69-year-old retiree who lives near Drury. “We’ve tried and tried, and now someone comes along and does something stupid. Right now we’re just waiting to see what happens next.

“It’s a shame, really. It kind of makes you wonder if there’s anything you can do.”