Description

I've been working with the teens at the Neighborhood Center TECH Program cleaning up this park each Tuesday mornings. When we did a cleanup on 7/8, we found all the benches at the chess tables (Upper Side of 4th and Dauphin Basket Ball Courts). We cleaned up the wood pieces, but when I returned to photograph the vandalism I found more pieces of wood in the playground were little kids play.

My suggestion is to have a camera mounted at any of the street lamps around the upper and lower end of the park. We have found various weed/ecstasy bags around the playground during cleanups. Weekly we find alum beer cans around the tree side of the park. If only someone would move into the old Hamilton Health building and put in a camera, this may deter such activity. This is a great little pocket park for the neighborhood kids and gets a bad rep from drug dealing, graffiti, and vandalism.

I've talked with Les Brown at the Heinz Senior Care building about developing a partnership with the Fire Museum and Neighborhood Center. In our teen program there is a component of 5 hours a month of community service. This is just one stop.