I lived across the street from the park in 1994(?) The neighborhood wasn’t exactly the best then. In fact my roommate’s car was vandalized a couple of times. Two years ago I had friends that were renting a home 3 blocks North of the park on French Avenue and were fed up with cleaning garbage out of their yard every morning, and the park is even worse. Besides the public urination, the park is littered with garbage because the people who hang out in the park don’t understand the simple freaking concept of garbage cans;
Some African migrants who congregate in the afternoon to play dominoes under a picnic shelter at the park say they have been targeted because of their race.
“We bring our kids here, too,” Deng Davidson said. “When there’s 40 black people playing dominoes and one white lady shows up, maybe they get scared.”
Bullshit. You are being targeted because you are acting like pigs. Don’t care what color you are or what country you come from. In America we don’t tolerate people acting like pigs. It is unacceptable to piss on trees in public and throw your garbage on the ground. I really don’t have a problem with the alcohol use or people playing dominoes, that is what parks are supposed to be used for, recreation, but they are not your personal toilet bowl and garbage can. It is about time the city is cracking down on this park, but it is typical of how the city operates, they tend ignore the lower income neighborhoods until someone bitches loud enough (Pettigrew Heights comes to mind).