Crime prompts return of Wasilla park rangers

WASILLA — Concerns about crime and vandalism will put rangers back in Wasilla city parks after they were nixed due to budget issues.

A 3-3 vote by the city council Friday set aside $25,180 to hire two temporary park rangers from June to September, after roughly a yearlong absence.

Councilwoman Colleen Sullivan-Leonard said she was moved to bring the rangers back in parts over concerns about public safety.

“I have received emails, phone calls, Facebook messages and have personally witnessed situations at our city parks where individuals and groups are using drugs, selling drugs, displaying aggressive behavior and showing disrespect toward adults and children,” Sullivan-Leonard wrote, in an introductory statement for the measure.

Mayor Bert Cottle voted to break the tie between council members who favored the rangers and council members who opposed them.

The unarmed rangers would serve as an easy point of reference for tourists and other park visitors, he said.

“They’re kind of the eyes and ears for the police department,” he said. “It’s just a safety factor. They don’t carry guns, and if they need additional help, they can call for a police officer.”

Rangers would be trained in the use of a police radio, and carry a single can of pepper spray, said Wasilla Police Chief Gene Belden.

While hard statistics about the nature of the contact in city parks weren’t immediately available, Belden said he’s heard anecdotal evidence of drug use and verbal altercations in the park.

“I don’t look at that stuff every day. But I have received reports of not physical, but more aggressive, smoking,” he said. “What it is they’re smoking, we don’t know. We’re not there when it happens.”

Some city council members, like Stu Graham, speculated that the park encounters could have something to do with a change in policy toward homeless encampments. The likely cause of the recent encounters was unsupervised youth, he said.

“Most of those are teenage kids and they can be from good families, no families, and we have no confirmation that it’s from the homeless,” he said. “Its, you know, where do you meet? School’s out, you meet your buddies someplace. You get loud and show off and do things you wouldn’t normally do, and this is the result of that.”

Park rangers would be able to report the interactions as they happened, Belden said.

“The thing about it is nobody calls when it happens,” he said. “It’s always an hour later, or after they think about it for a while, or something of that nature, where a park ranger would be right there down in the midst of all of it. Then we don’t have to worry about people filing complaints or calling or things of that nature, and that will be their primary job.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.