Too Many Deputies

As a recent San Diego transplant (from Buffalo, N.Y., no less), I read with great interest your article on the Lagunas in Sunday’s newspaper.

My wanderlust suitably sparked, I gathered my flock and arrived there at approximately noon on Sunday. I found the expected crowds of happy San Diegans frolicking in the snow but was rather surprised and perturbed by the large number of representatives of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

Despite the pastoral setting and peaceful crowd, the khaki-clad constabulary found it necessary to issue hundreds of parking tickets, shatter the wintry calm with loudspeaker-delivered pronouncements and otherwise do their best to make their presence known. All of this attention given to a crowd consisting almost entirely of young families and couples.

Though a police presence is required in a park system as large and as heavily trafficked as the Lagunas, it would appear to this park user that a terrible misappropriation of resources has been effected in this era of budgetary constraints.

RALPH W. PETERS

San Diego