MacArthur Park Crime Troubles Neighbors

It’s 11:15 a.m., and Gabriel Montoya sits calmly on a MacArthur Park bench staring at the group of crack dealers who control the south side of the lake.

By noon, Montoya, who has visited the park for the last 18 years, will have seen a woman run around the park naked after getting her crack fix; a man casually urinate on the grass bordering Alvarado Street; and two men threatening to fight in front of him. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Friday morning in this park, he says.

“Being here is being willing to die,” Montoya says. “A rumble can start at any moment, and you can get caught in it,” he adds. “This park is the worst I have seen in my life.”

According to Los Angeles Police Department statistics, there have been 62 violent crimes inside the park this year: two homicides, one rape, 24 aggravated assaults and 35 robberies.

The violence has not gone unnoticed. Several coalitions--including police, business and community groups--and representatives from the city attorney’s and mayor’s offices are mulling strategies to reclaim MacArthur Park.

Among the proposals are boosting police surveillance, improving lighting inside the park, fencing it--even moving the police station into the park. Not everyone concurs on the alternatives, but they all agree that something has to be done to make the two-square-block expanse safe for the area’s residents.

MacArthur Park, located west of downtown Los Angeles, dates from the 19th century and was once a gem of the city’s park system. In an area of upscale apartments and elegant residences--Charlie Chaplin’s former home lies a few blocks away--the park got its name from Gen. Douglas MacArthur, of World War II and Korean War fame.

But since the early 1970s, the park and its surroundings have deteriorated. Now, the neighborhood, one of the city’s most densely populated, consists of poor families in small houses and large apartment buildings. With poverty came crime.

Nearly 375,000 people live in the eight square miles that surround MacArthur Park. The park could offer a respite for the community’s working-class families. In its northeast corner, which recently has been refurbished, the paths are clean and children frolic on playground equipment.

But elsewhere, the park’s palm trees provide shade for drug transactions, its lake is the center of gang disputes, and its bridges and bathrooms harbor prostitution.

“This park is going to waste,” says Daniel G. Berdakin, a physician who has worked in the area for nearly 20 years. “This community has a tremendous need for the park. The drug addicts have no right to take the park away from the people.”

The smells of MacArthur Park tell its story.

The constant stench of sweat, the scent of urine on wet grass, the aroma of marijuana, the toxic trail of crack cocaine smoke--all are the odors of a typical day.

On another Friday morning, David Johnson, 40, who frequents the park and says he lives close by, waits to use one of four portable toilets near its northwest tunnels. A man smokes in the first, while a prostitute shares the second one with a client. A woman gets dressed in the third and Johnson is deterred by the filth of the fourth one.

“These bathrooms are a den for thieves, prostitutes, drug dealers and drug addicts,” he complains. “That’s basically what they are used for.”

There have been 227 violent crimes reported this year in the area surrounding MacArthur Park, according to statistics from the LAPD’s Rampart Division. But many other crimes are not reported, particularly those that happen at night, police say.

It’s easy to see why. There are no working lights along the park’s pathways, and the corridors that have lights are constantly vandalized. Park Ranger Albert Torres says drug dealers often threaten city employees who try to fix the lights.

“The lighting is something that should be a priority because it’s a quick solution,” says Alex Bautista, a police officer who patrols the park. “The blanket of darkness is a comfortable atmosphere for criminal activity,” he says, adding that the city should install vandal-proof lights.

The police also have difficulty enforcing the city ordinance prohibiting people from being in the park at night. Lt. Don Lehman of the LAPD’s Rampart Division works with Operation Healthy Neighborhoods, a city-funded project that brings together city officials, local businesses and community groups seeking ways to improve the park.

Lehman says the LAPD is trying to reduce crime in the park, but cannot provide permanent surveillance without limiting the department’s ability to patrol other neighborhoods. Police say it would take at least 10 officers to guard the park’s 32 acres effectively. Currently, no officers are assigned exclusively to the park.

Lehman says the Rampart Division should build its police station on park premises to control the area.

Another Idea: Putting a Fence Around Park

“I think the park should be taken into consideration,” he says. “You have the land; it’s one of the our highest-crime areas. You need to find something to revive it, and having the police in the area could help out.”

Lehman says he is aware that fixing up the park might disperse the crime activity to Rampart’s residential areas.

“We would have to be more aggressive in the other areas,” he says. “But our position is to reduce crime in the park.”

Berdakin has another idea to help the police. The physician, who is also president of the MacArthur Park Merchants Assn., wants to fence the park. In the early 1990s, he was instrumental in the fencing of Lafayette Park a few blocks away. Today, people play soccer and basketball at night on Lafayette’s courts and fields, while prostitutes and drug addicts smoke crack in MacArthur Park.

Berdakin says the city has forgotten MacArthur Park, and he thinks he knows why.

“This park is the best example about what happens when people don’t vote,” he says. Most neighborhood residents cannot speak English, he says, and don’t have the political clout to put pressure on the city. If the City Council turned its attention to the park, it could quickly move the criminals out, Berdakin says.

Others say, however, that it will take more than a fence to end crime in MacArthur Park.

“If you fence the park, what you’ll have is dope dealers dealing dope through the fences,” says police Sgt. Mike Richardson, who patrols the area. “That’s what they do. We do things to stop crime and they figure out a way to go around it,” he says, adding that unless the city commits significant resources, the police cannot solve the problem.

The police have been joined by others willing to accept the challenge of fixing up the park. Operation Healthy Neighborhoods was established recently by the city to involve residents in improving their community. Its project manager, Mark Chapa, who represents Mayor James K. Hahn, has suggested forming a community-run nonprofit organization to improve the park.

Joseph Colletti, director for the Institute for Urban Research and Development, says community efforts are already paying off. The Los Angeles-based nonprofit group, which aids lower-income communities, has helped about a dozen street vendors obtain licenses to sell their wares legally in the park. It has organized activities for children during the last five weekends. Colletti believes that encouraging positive events in the area will eventually elbow the bad elements out of MacArthur Park.

“The park is a great resource,” park ranger Torres says, adding that he has seen the area go through worse times. “I would like for all the people to be safe when they go to the park. That’s my hope and my dream.”

Miguel Ileso shares that hope. On this Friday morning, he walks swiftly through the park, holding his daughter Florentina’s hand as they head to the bus stop on Alvarado Street. He rushes around the lake without looking at the benches where drug transactions are taking place.

Ileso says he must be careful when walking through MacArthur Park with his daughter, who is in elementary school. He says he takes her to Lafayette Park often to play soccer. He is afraid to take her to MacArthur Park now, but says he would take her if the park were cleaned.

Florentina thinks differently. “Not here,” she says. “It stinks like a bathroom.”