This is your Pioneer Park on fewer drugs: Video cameras push crime away
Crime » Dealing is down there, but sellers are moving west.
By Nate Carlisle
The Salt Lake Tribune
Forty years ago, Gerald Robinson brought his children to Pioneer Park to play on the steam engine that sat there. Then Robinson stopped coming to the park, he said, because it looked run down and filled with vagrants.
The steam engine is long gone, but Robinson was back in Pioneer Park on Wednesday, paying bocce with his brother.
"It looks very family-friendly today," said Robinson, a retired optometrist from Centerville.
Brothers Gerald, left, and Keith Robinson play a round of bocce Wednesday in the park. "This is a lot cleaner down here now," said Gerald Robinson of Centerville, "I would not hesitate to bring my granddaughter here." Keith Robinson is from Castro Valley, Calif. The Salt Lake City Police Department put out a six-month review of the cameras saying crime is way down in the park. (Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune )
"It's a definite noticeable difference since the cameras were installed, " said Ruth Twitchell employee of Carlucci's Bakery directly across the street from Pioneer Park. She said there appears to be less people loitering since the police have upped their presence. We're asking businesses around Pioneer Park how they like the cameras there. SLCPD just put out a six-month review of the cameras saying crime is way down in the park. (Leah Hogsten/ The Salt Lake Tribune)
Salt Lake City police on Wednesday said drug trafficking in Pioneer Park has disintegrated to just a couple of arrests in the six months since video cameras began monitoring the park.
That has not eliminated the narcotics trade in the surrounding neighborhoods. Police have documented more drugs -- especially crack cocaine -- dealt west of The Gateway, about three blocks from the park. On Tuesday night, narcotics detectives conducted a sweep in that area and netted 22 arrests, said Salt Lake City police Detective Robin Snyder.
"We kind of anticipated that when we put the cameras in the park," Snyder said.
But the news on Wednesday was good for Pioneer Park, which bears historical significance for Salt Lake City but has long been a symbol of homelessness and substance abuse. The construction of The Gateway and new condominiums and businesses west of downtown has helped gentrify Pioneer Park, but residents and workers still complained about the open sale of drugs and the sight of transients sleeping in the park at all hours.
Salt Lake City police installed four video cameras in February. The department released statistics Wednesday showing that since that time, calls for service have fallen to one-half or one-third of what they were in the same months of 2007. (The park was undergoing renovations the first half of 2008.)
There have been only two arrests for drug distribution in Pioneer Park since the cameras were installed, Snyder said.
Ruth Twitchell, an employee at Carlucci's Bakery across from the park, said people used to enter the bakery to ask for change or food. Since the cameras went up, that's stopped, Twitchell said.
"I've heard people walk in here and say Pioneer Park looks a lot different," Twitchell said.
She said the bakery's sales have increased the past few months, though she could not attribute that to the cameras.
When police Chief Chris Burbank introduced the cameras at a news conference earlier this year, he pledged the department would not use the cameras to infringe civil liberties. Snyder on Wednesday said a narcotics lieutenant occasionally monitors the cameras in real time to look for suspicious activity, but no video recordings have been saved as evidence. Video not saved is automatically destroyed after seven days, according to a written policy.
Snyder said the only two arrests attributed to the cameras have been for alcohol offenses.
The area around 200 South and 500 West had nighttime drug dealing before the Pioneer Park cameras were installed, but Snyder said detectives have noticed daytime trafficking has moved there, too.
Narcotics detectives also recently made a sweep of Library Square. Snyder said that area caters to marijuana buyers and sellers, but Snyder did not have available statistics on whether trafficking there has increased since the Pioneer Park cameras were installed.
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