The Somerset Community Police Centre is planning a “strategic initiative” to combat crime and disturbances in Dundonald Park after a marked increase in local residents’ complaints about safety in the park.
Dundonald Park, which occupies a city block on Somerset Street West between Bay and Lyon streets, has for many years required more policing than any other park in the central-west district.
But police say it’s clear they need to tweak their approach to the trouble-prone park because offences related to open liquor and aggressive behaviour are on the rise.
“We’ve had a significant number of complaints this year, more so than other years,” says Const. Khoa Hoang, officer in charge at the Somerset Community Police Centre.
He says over the last six months about 40 tickets were issued in the park and adjacent areas, a problem he attributes to the busy Beer Store across the street.
“Despite our best efforts, we haven’t been able to curb behaviour to our satisfaction or to the satisfaction of residents,” Hoang says.
After consulting with Friends of Dundonald Park and other community members, Hoang says he’s decided to request an audit on the park to determine how crime might be curbed with environmental design.
“Crime prevention through environmental design entails understanding the relationship between physical design and levels of criminal activity, and then manipulating design to reduce the incidence of crime,” explains a Crime Prevention Ottawa report.
This could involve altering the park’s layout, improving lighting and removing benches from secluded areas. The changes made will depend on both the audit results and city approval, Hoang says.
He says these non-invasive strategies are worth trying because conventional policing methods haven’t worked in the park as effectively as he’d like.
Police officers frequently patrolled the Centretown park this summer in response to the rise in complaints, but offences continued to occur.
“Proactive policing is kind of like a speed bump; it’s effective for slowing people down immediately after, but not so much in the long term,” Hoang explains. “As soon as the police officers are gone, the problem persists.”
Robin Buttigieg, a member of Friends of Dundonald Park, says loitering and drinking in the park occur both at night and during the day, when children are on the playground and dog walkers are strolling about.
“I’ve seen fights breaking out amongst these people who are regularly in the park causing trouble,” she says. “They don’t really seem to care who’s around.”
Buttigieg says loiterers might feel less inclined to enter the park after a trip to the liquor store if benches are removed from secluded areas in the park.
But loitering is not always a negative thing, so any changes to the park need to deter criminal activity while ensuring other park users don’t feel overly restricted, says Nancy Worsfold, Crime Prevention Ottawa’s executive director.
“You want moms to loiter in the park and watch their kids play. You want people to loiter in a park and play chess,” she says.
“But drinking in a park is not legal and it can be very disturbing, so it’s all about balancing those issues.”
Hoang says his goal is to achieve that balance by experimenting with different strategies until the community feels there’s a “happy medium.”
He says changing the park’s structure will be a last resort and that the initiative will first combine regular police patrols with smaller measures, like putting up signs that warn against drinking in the park.
He says he hopes to have changes to the park in place by next summer because warm weather tends to encourage more loitering and outdoor drinking.