A Couple of Days in the Park
My friend Joey was incensed. Little Nancy Reagan had popped up again like a Barbie Doll-in-a-box and was once more getting credit for doing something about the dope problem in America.
Specifically, she was being honored by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors for her “Just Say No” campaign to keep kids off drugs.
The ceremony was brief. Nancy said a little thank you, curtsied a little curtsy and was off to fight a little crime.
This drove Joey up the wall.
“What the hell does she know about drugs?” he was demanding. “The closest she ever got to reality was peeking out a window at a rock house raid.”
That was a year and a half ago. Nancy watched the raid in South-Central L.A. from the comfort of an air-conditioned motor home parked nearby.
After the raid, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates gave her a look into the house.
“I saw people on the floor, rooms that were unfurnished . . . all very depressing,” she said later while enjoying a nice fruit salad.
It was never clear whether she was more depressed by the people on the floor or by the lack of furniture.
“You know what you ought to do?” Joey said to me. “Spend some time at MacArthur Park and contrast Nancy’s tidy little campaign with the realities of crack on the street.”
Not a bad idea. So I did spend a couple of days out there and what I saw wasn’t what either Joey or I had expected. Something of a miracle had taken place, and Nancy Reagan had nothing to do with it.
I first visited the park 20 years ago and liked the blend of cultures coexisting in harmony on the edge of an uneasy metropolis.
Kids rode paddle boats on the lake, parents pushed their babies in strollers and old men played chess under multicolored beach umbrellas. Even the ducks seemed happy.
Then I went back last May when the owners of Edward’s Steak House announced they were shutting down after 44 years. Their reason: The area around the park had become a human sewer. They were right.
Dealers, junkies, gang bangers, whores, pimps and panhandlers had turned the park into a scene out of a futuristic movie where the social order collapses and an evil revelry prevails.
It was surreal. Crack deals were made in broad daylight and addicts made no effort to hide their use-blackened glass pipes. Men and women too stoned to walk lay comatose on the lawns where kids once played and on benches where old men used to spend their days.
A hooker practiced her trade standing up in a tunnel that connects two sections of the park, and bums urinated into the lake.
“There were no kids in the park anymore,” a beat cop said to me. “Decent people had put the place off limits. It had become a little piece of hell.”
I didn’t know what to expect when I returned the other day at the behest of my friend. But what I saw can be communicated in simple terms. The kids are back.
I spent a couple of days hanging around just to reassure myself babies hadn’t been rented as props for a presidential visit or something, and that the bums and felons wouldn’t return as soon as the visit was over.
But that wasn’t it. The cops at the Rampart Division, including the commander, all say it’s true, the park is clean, and they’re going to keep it that way.
One old guy said he hasn’t seen it look this good since 1935.
What happened, I think, is merchants in the area and the good people who hated what was happening took a long look at the place when Edward’s shut down. They said enough is enough.
They wanted the park back.
Extra cops were called in, a police substation went up where the boat house used to be, foot patrols were reestablished, bicycle patrols were inaugurated and now they’re talking about cops on horseback.
Even street vendors, who sold everything from bug poison to tacos, were put out of business. They attracted crowds, and crowds lured the other vendors, the crack dealers.
With all the heat being applied, the bums and felons scattered like squirrels in a firestorm, and the cops gave the park back to the people.
It isn’t over yet, of course. The dealers, hookers and junkies didn’t scatter far. They’re still out there in the alleys and on the back streets. The fight goes on.
But MacArthur Park itself is a symbol of what can be done on the mean streets, when everyone wants it done. A single victory doesn’t win a war, but at least one flag is flying.
I should thank Nancy Reagan and friend Joey for getting me back to the park again. It was good sitting on a bench and watching the kids play. I like that.
