Drug use, suicides, thefts, a fatal shooting: Data show years of problems at San Diego library

The San Diego Central Library is a $185-million jewel of a building. Just blocks from Petco Park in the city’s East Village, its silhouette cuts an impressive figure in the downtown skyline.

But under its domed roof, employees and patrons regularly witness unruly behavior, drug use and mental health emergencies.

Data show that calls to police from the library happen, on average, once a day. As many as nine security guards, some armed, clock in daily — all of whom are trained to administer naloxone, an emergency medicine that can reverse an opioid overdose.

On Tuesday, 20-year-old Trey Walker was shot and killed when an altercation that began in the library’s foyer spilled into the courtyard. A 24-year-old man was wounded.

Walker was a new dad, his mother said this week. His daughter is 10 months old.

“He’s a very caring, sweet young man,” Shelly Jamison said of her son. “He was becoming a father, trying to figure out his way in the world.”

Since May 2018, more than 1,800 police calls for service have been logged at the library, police data shows, reporting a wide range of incidents, including drug overdoses, thefts, assaults and people purportedly carrying concealed weapons.

There have been more than 170 calls so far this year. There were 309 calls made in all of last year.

In December, library officials said there had been 36 overdose incidents on the property since July 2019. It is unclear how many were fatal. There were 263 reported incidents of illegal drug use or possession during that time.

“We’ve had an increasing number of incidents with overdoses, [homeless] encampments around the building, fights and thefts,” city head librarian Misty Jones told the City Council’s budget committee last year. “There is a lot of mental illness and substance abuse, and the issues that come along with that.”

After the fatal shooting last week, the library closed for several days. Library officials weren’t immediately able to comment on safety concerns at the location in part because they were still processing the trauma of the incident, city officials said.

Patrick Stewart, CEO of the Library Foundation, which supports and raises funds for library programs and services, penned a blog post on the organization’s website in response to the shooting.

“We are still processing this incident internally and will be for a while,” he wrote. “We feel deeply for those most closely affected — the young man whose life was tragically lost as well as his family, the young man wounded, the library and Library Shop staff who witnessed this horrible act, and the patrons who use the library to enrich their lives.

“While it is bracing, for those who have been paying attention, it is not, unfortunately, completely surprising.”

Library workers now regularly witness or handle reports about unruly behavior, thefts, drug use and overdoses, he wrote. Mental health crises that pose a danger to others in the library are more common than ever, and library staff have responded to two suicides and multiple attempts in recent years.

Stewart said library staff have been trained to de-escalate tense situations and learned to administer naloxone. The city has increased the number of security guards by two since September. The cost of security at the central library and other neighborhood branches has nearly superseded what the library spends on books, online resources and other materials, Stewart wrote.

The city has a $29-million, five-year contract with a security guard service, but it’s unclear how much of that goes toward libraries specifically.

Library staff plan to put in place new safety measures to make visitors and staff members safer, Stewart said. But he stressed in the post: “The gravity of our troubled social environment that led to Tuesday’s tragedy is not the library’s problem to solve by itself.”

San Diego police Lt. Ryan Hallahan oversees the department’s Central Division, which encompasses the downtown area. He said his officers stepped up enforcement around the library in January after hearing from people concerned about the safety of children attending e3 Civic High, located inside the library.

“These kids were seeing homeless people doing drugs, saying and doing inappropriate things that kids don’t need to see,” he said. “We started specifically enforcing the areas where kids were walking.”

Those efforts are reflected, in some ways, in the data provided by the department. The term “call for service” is used in several different ways — not all involve an actual call. It can refer to a person who dials 911 after witnessing an incident. But it can also mean someone flagged down an officer for help or that officers chose to investigate a situation based on something they observed.

Over the last five years, selective enforcement calls made up about 20% of the total calls logged at the library, data show. This call type can refer to a few different activities. It can mean an area was visited by the department’s homeless outreach teams. It can also be used when officers are doing more proactive police work in an area.

Selective enforcement calls at the library have been on the rise in recent years. In 2021, there were 36. So far this year, there have been 73.

Hallahan added that with the department’s continuing staffing shortage — the agency is down about 200 officers — they aren’t always able to do as much proactive enforcement as they would like.

That sentiment was echoed by Jared Wilson, president of the San Diego Police Officers Assn., who said proactive police work is down across the city.

“The Central Library is a tragic example of a beautiful facility overrun by crime,” Wilson said last week.

Police officials attributed many library calls to homeless individuals who gather in and around the library. On a typical day, most people who visit the library are homeless, library officials said last year — a phenomenon fueled in part by an overall drop in visits to libraries nationwide and a growing population of unhoused people in San Diego.

The library offers many services to homeless patrons, including a Veterans Resource Center staffed by People Assisting the Homeless and two other offices: one staffed with an outreach worker from the National Alliance on Mental Illness and another with a part-time social worker.

But not all of the library’s problems can be attributed to homelessness.

Neither Walker, nor the man suspected of shooting him, Kenneth Chaney, was homeless, police said.

Investigators determined that the altercation occurred at the entrance of the library when a group of people, including the two victims, confronted Chaney over a stolen backpack. During the fight, Chaney pulled out a gun and fired.

In a GoFundme that was started to help pay for funeral expenses, Walker’s family described him as the life of the party — an outgoing person who loved to make people laugh.

“All Trey wanted was for everyone he knew to get along and bring happiness and joy around each other,” the fundraising page read.

Although Walker wasn’t homeless, he wasn’t a stranger to that life. Jamison, Walker’s mother, said their family went through periods of homelessness while her son was growing up. After his death, a makeshift memorial was set up alongside the library. Candles and notes on cardboard were interspersed with seashells along the sidewalk.

“He was one of the most caring people in the world,” Jamison said.

Chaney was arrested Thursday afternoon near University Avenue and Interstate 15, police said. He was booked into jail on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and assault with a firearm. Chaney is being held without bail and could be arraigned as early as Tuesday, jail records indicate.