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Complaints over Scouten-Lee in Parsons include profanity, noise, litter and drug deals.
Neighbors of the Scouten-Lee Park in Parsons said they want basketball hoops removed because they attract people to the park after hours who make noise, litter and use foul language.
Aimee Dilger/The Times Leader
WILKES-BARRE – The people making trouble at a Scouten-Lee Park in Parsons weren’t there as the sun went down Tuesday, but they left plenty of evidence they had been there.
A five-minute sweep of the park with neighbors reveals seven mini-baggies – the kind used to store drugs – empty cigarette packs and cigar wrappers, broken glass, a condom and numerous empty plastic drink bottles – all within 10 feet of children’s playground equipment.
Residents of the neighborhood have called on city council to take action to cut down on illegal activity at the park, and are expected to raise the issue again at tonight’s council meeting.
Parkin Street residents seem to have an endless supply of anecdotes about the park from the last two years alone.
There was the time someone stuffed a tubular section of playground equipment with trash and set it on fire, and the two-week period when the fire department was called seven times because someone kept setting the mulch ablaze.
There was the time someone moved a teeter-totter to the middle of the train tracks behind the park, the man who went joyriding through the park in a pickup truck and got stuck, and the streaker who ran naked through a high school girls athletics practice.
There have been after-school rumbles involving as many as 30 teenagers, and a girl savagely beaten in the middle of Parkin Street, neighbors said.
“I wanted to live here,” said Charlotte Ostopick, who lives across Parkin Street from the park. “I wanted the house because of that park, and now I regret it.”
Neighbors identified several distinct groups creating problems at the park. There are the basketball players, who make noise at night, use foul language and litter.
Then there are the drug users, teenagers mostly – who roll joints and smoke them openly at picnic tables; and the dealers, who meet their clients in cars parked out front.
In response to complaints about basketball players, council passed a motion to temporarily remove the hoops from the park’s basketball court, but the mayor’s office has put that action on hold while it looks into whether federal funds were used in construction projects at the park.
If they were, taking down the basketball hoops might require that the city return the federal dollars.
City spokesman Drew McLaughlin said Wednesday the city is still researching the question.
Councilman Bill Barrett, who represents the Parkin Street neighborhood as part of District D, said, “Council agreed that it is a problem, that it’s a neighborhood nuisance and (that) it needs to be addressed.”
Neighbors said removing the basketball court would be a good start to tackling the problem.
“If they take those hoops down, those kids don’t have any reason to be here,” said one Parkin Street resident who didn’t wish to give her name. “It won’t stop the drug activities, but at least that will stop.”
Barrett said moving the basketball court to Hollenback Park could be one solution, as it is within walking distance of Scouten-Lee Park and isn’t as close to homes or a children’s playground.
Council also has asked police to increase patrols of the area, Barrett said.
On Tuesday, an officer drove by and chatted with neighbors around dusk, a resident showing him the empty baggies he had found, and police would be called back by neighbors at least twice later that night.
Barrett also said he would talk to city officials about replacing broken playground equipment at the park.