Unsavory Side of Park Puts Neighborhood on Its Guard

The green glades, winding bike paths and manicured rose gardens of North Hollywood Park only barely hide unwholesome and sometimes dangerous elements that also are part of the park’s landscape, police and area residents say.

In the late night and early morning hours, the 52-acre park in the East San Fernando Valley is the turf of transients, “cruising” homosexuals and youth gangs, they say. Transients huddle around makeshift campfires in the picnic area, while other men loiter nearby at the public restrooms, where Los Angeles police say they make an arrest a day for lewd conduct or indecent exposure.

In the summer, North Hollywood Park poses a special concern for vice officers because it is used by several day camps, including one operated by the East Valley YMCA, which is across the street. Counselors have been instructed by police and YMCA administrators to inspect and clear the bathrooms before allowing their 5- to 13-year-old campers inside.

“It used to be a nice family park, and we used to jog there and ride bikes,” neighborhood resident Patty Cochran said. “Now, I won’t even go in there.”

Dank, Defaced Tunnels

Cochran, 44, said she told her son not to ride his bike through the park on his way home from school because her son and daughter once were “flashed” by a man there. The incident occurred in one of the dank, graffiti-covered tunnels used by pedestrians to get from one section of the park to another.

Cochran was among 30 people crowded into a house on Morrison Street last week to discuss conditions in the park, and burglaries in the area, with a police officer. Some of the residents’ complaining was based on morals--they were offended by what Cochran called “this element.” But they also said problems at the park involve more than immoral conduct.

“We hear a lot of gunshots in the middle of the night, with people yelling for help and running down the street,” said Marthermarie Pate, who lives across the street from North Hollywood Park.

Cochran said that, when her home was burglarized a year ago, she questioned police about whether the park attracted criminals. “They told me, ‘That place is a toilet. You want to stay away from there,’ ” she recalled.

Several Neighborhood Watch groups already are in operation near the park, and the Morrison Street meeting was the second gathering of another watch group formed just last month.

Sgt. Jim Wakefield said major crimes in the area cannot be traced directly to North Hollywood Park. Police say the well-kept homes in the adjoining West Park neighborhood simply are likely targets for burglars, who can easily leave the area by driving onto the Hollywood Freeway, which cuts through the middle of the park.

But Wakefield said police have noticed an increase in drug sales at the park. And he readily agreed with residents’ descriptions of the scene around the park’s faded-brown public restrooms. About 30 arrests a month have little impact on the problem, he said.

“We can’t make any progress. For every 10 you arrest, there’s 10 more who want to be there,” Wakefield said. “The problem has been here long before I joined the vice department, and it will be here after I leave.”

‘Cruising’ Spot

Herb Grade, district supervisor for the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department, said loitering at North Hollywood Park is no different than at other parks. “Nothing specific has been brought to my attention about this,” he said, adding that the department is “not interested in vice. We’re interested in recreation.”

Wakefield, however, said the park has been a prominent homosexual “cruising” spot for at least 20 years, “definitely the No. 1 park in the Valley.”

Men in cars, looking for partners, drive slowly around the park or pull to the curb and wait. At 6 p.m. on a recent weekday, other men lounged around the restroom area or against trees. At night, the sexual activity is not limited to the restrooms, but takes place on benches, in the bushes and openly on the grass, say police and the men who frequent the park.

East Valley YMCA officials last year produced a videotape showing procedures to be used by camp counselors taking children to the restrooms. Rich Brumagin, associate executive director of the organization, said failure to properly inspect the rooms is grounds for firing.

“We avoid these people like the plague,” associate YMCA program director Matt Storey said. “They hang out in certain areas of the park. They’ve staked out their territory. We have ours.”

Children Isolated

One day last week, children enrolled in the camp played and ate lunch in a marked-off area of the park. Some transients gathered around picnic tables nearby, but the transients and the children did not meet.

North Hollywood Park was built in the late 1920s, city park officials said. It is bordered by Tujunga Avenue and West Park Drive on the east and west, and by Chandler Boulevard and Riverside Drive on the north and south.

One of the leading anti-crime activists in the area is Arthur Silber, who has lived about 100 feet from the park for 28 years and said he grew up playing in the park, which has tennis courts, a swimming pool, a library, a senior citizens’ center and many large grassy areas.

Silber said that since being burglarized twice in one year, he has secured his home with two alarm systems, two dogs and a steel door. “The only thing you can do is try to fight it,” he said. “You become an armed fortress.”

More Lighting Sought

Silber is a block captain for one of the Neighborhood Watch groups and patrols the area on foot, reporting suspicious-looking people to police. He said he has repeatedly asked police and city officials to lock the restrooms at night and install more lights in the park.

Grade and John Pawlek, senior recreation director for the park, said they do not recall any complaints about lighting or the unlocked restrooms. But they said money may be allocated for increased lighting.

Although the park long has been a well-known cruising spot for homosexuals, some of the area residents said they were unaware of the reason for the traffic until police informed them.

Sylvan Markman, who moved to the area two years ago, said he did not know what to think when he first noticed that cars would follow him in the evenings as he walked his dogs. “Realizing what the intent was angers me,” he said.

Muggings Suspected

For the most part, though, the different subcultures at the park seem to want to keep to themselves. Just as the transients and children keep their distance during the day, so is there no open mingling among the different groups at the park at night--even though police suspect there are occasional muggings of homosexuals by gangs, whose graffiti are visible in the restrooms.

Tom, a writer from Venice, said that at any given time he may be among 30 homosexuals cruising the park.

“The majority of people who come here aren’t out of the closet,” he said. “It’s a pity we have to do this, but many of us can’t be seen walking openly into a gay bar. This is the only semi-legitimate way to go about it.”

As he sat on a bench, men walked slowly by, stopped to get a drink at a fountain and perched themselves on picnic benches to watch others. Some sported ties and looked like businessmen. Others wore shorts and did stretching exercises on the grass.

Concern Over AIDS

Occasionally, one would disappear into the restroom off Magnolia Boulevard, and a second or third would follow. Minutes later, they would emerge one by one, jump in their cars and drive off in opposite directions.

“This ain’t no stable relationship,” said Tom, who is in his late 40s.

Richard, 40, said he is divorced and that he frequently has come to North Hollywood Park to meet men. But lately, he said, he has been increasingly concerned about getting AIDS. So now he just sits in his car and watches.

He said he is both fascinated and repulsed by the scene, and finds himself drawn back again and again.

“I’ve watched the vice squad swoop down and arrest men, and as soon as the cops leave, they come right back,” he said.

The park’s neighbors say part of the problem is that police do not make enough such arrests. But police say their manpower is limited.

“I don’t know why it’s acceptable that the park belongs to this element, but we seem to have conceded it’s theirs,” Cochran said. “We’re law-abiding citizens, and we have to live by the rules of society, so why shouldn’t they?”