Police patrols, earlier closures included in Seattle's summer safety plan for some parks

When it comes to mitigating rowdy or criminal behavior in waterfront parks this summer, Seattle officials say they will rely on additional police patrols. The city will also employ park rangers, earlier beach curfews, and physical barriers such as additional gates to keep order at popular parks and boat launches.

Robert Johnson is president of the View Ridge Community Council. His group has pressed city officials to address what Johnson describes as large parties, reckless driving, property damage, and shots fired on warm nights in Magnuson Park in Northeast Seattle.

Johnson said people set up big speakers that can be heard across Lake Washington.

“That starts the process of people congregating and it just turns more serious when they’re shooting off guns in the park,” he said.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s summer safety plan for the parks includes several changes at Magnuson, including new gates and barriers, and an earlier boat ramp curfew of 10 p.m.

Johnson said those measures should “effectively close this section of the park, which is where most of the partying and most of the incidents that occurred last summer occurred: around this boat launch.”

So why are boat launches such a magnet for gatherings — and problems — on summer nights?

Jon Jainga, who oversees emergency management and the park ranger program at Seattle Parks & Recreation, said it’s mostly the allure of the large, flat parking lots intended for people to park their boat trailers.

“It creates a very large...area for people to test out their different cars that they’ve been working on,” Jainga said.

He said the parks department is funding special evening patrols by Seattle police at three local parks this summer: Alki Beach, Golden Gardens — as it did last summer — and now Magnuson. The parks department is paying for voluntary overtime for the police presence.

A memorandum of understanding for the Magnuson emphasis patrols specified that the Department of Parks & Recreation will pay up to $46,000 over the summer for the hourly services of two police officers “to monitor illegal alcohol consumption, noise ordinance violations, parking violations, property damage, and illegal fires, and take any other relevant law enforcement action on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights” and holidays through Labor Day.

“We have patrol officers that sign up for the late shift,” Jainga said. “They will walk with our district park crews that are putting out the beach fires at 10 p.m. and also walk with our park rangers to make sure that everyone understands that the park will be closing soon.”

Mayor Harrell’s Chief of Public Safety Natalie Walton-Anderson calls the strategy for high-priority parks this summer a “tiered” approach which relies on various smaller measures, such as locking restrooms at night, installing more lighting, and drawing on city employees from every possible department.

“We wanted to increase our park presence using all the partners that we could, and all the departments,” she said. “So that includes our parks, it includes our parking enforcement officers, it includes SPD, and then the security presence as well.”

Private security is responsible for closing and locking gates at boat ramps each night. New gates are scheduled to be installed at Magnuson and Gasworks parks by the beginning of July. In addition a handful of parks will be closing more than an hour earlier this summer including Alki, Golden Gardens, Gas Works, and Hoa Mai Park in the Chinatown-International District.

Walton-Anderson said the earlier closures are meant to prevent crime. But in future plans, she wants to highlight places where young people can go at night, as well.

“What we need to fold into our next iterations of this is identifying and advertising where are those additional places [are] through Parks & Recreation, through our community centers," she said.

Jon Jainga with Parks & Recreation said park rangers have been engaging with local teens in basketball games at Garfield and Rainier Beach Community Centers.

The city has scaled up the park ranger program to its current size of 28 positions, including four supervisors and four current vacancies. The park rangers are unarmed and do outreach for voluntary compliance on issues like unleashed dogs and littering.

In addition to parks-funded overtime for police patrols, the city's plan calls for more proactive police patrols within the city's existing resources for high priority parks including Seward Park. Just as the plan was going into effect for Memorial Day weekend, police found a sixteen-year-old shooting victim in Seward Park on Friday evening. SPD said the victim was shot in the abdomen and transported to Harborview Medical Center in "serious but stable" condition.

Back at Magnuson Park, Alhaji Dukuray sat by Lake Washington, saying it was his first visit back since he moved away from the area to Renton a dozen years ago. He was glad to notice maintenance work going on, and to find the park well cared for.

“12 to 13 years, and still — you see it’s still being maintained so — good job!” Dukuray said.

Park goer Yvonne Elliot said Magnuson is a favorite place to stroll because of all the walkways.

“They keep it up all the time, there’s always groundspeople here clearing out the weeds and making sure everything is nice and accessible and clean,” Elliot said.

Another visitor, Marilyn Ostrum, said conditions seem to be improving.

“I would say the last few months have been better for me, I’m down here quite a bit with my dog or just walking by myself and I don’t feel unsafe,” Ostrum said. “Although I wouldn’t come at night.”