Victims families speak at the Peck Park Shooting Press Conference
On Oct. 27, the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council hosted a town hall on public safety in parks in the Harbor Area. The town hall was in response to a shooting at Peck Park on July 24, where a shooter shot several people at a baseball game, killing two and wounding seven.
“Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council wants to work in collaboration with the city, Los Angeles departments and stakeholders,” said Melanie Labrecque, chair of the council’s public safety committee. “The primary goal of this town hall is to keep our community safe by putting in place processes that will provide a safe environment for members of the public to enjoy our parks with the knowledge that their safety is paramount.”
To that end, the town hall had representatives from the City of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Park Rangers. They discussed the permitting process for events at the park, as well as what to do in a dangerous situation at a park.
“Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council is holding a town hall to look at the incident and see how we, as a community can gain insight at how this incident could have been, to a certain degree, avoided, and how, as a community, we can partner to minimize the chances of this happening again,” said Ray Regalado, president of the council.
However, no one ever really addressed how the incident could have been prevented.
“If the parks are used more by the residents around it, and permits were enforced, you wouldn’t get the bad actors in the park,” Labrecque said in an interview after the town hall. “And I think that’s the easiest way to prevent it.”
Labrecque said that nothing could ever definitely prevent such a thing, but she argued that having city staff at the park seven days a week, and having better vetted permits, would help prevent it.
“One hundred and ninety-nine people, at an event, triggers LAPD response to have security at the park,” Labrecque said. “But if they fudge it and lie and say only 150; and 300 people show, it doesn’t trigger LAPD to be notified.”
Labrecque said there were over 500 people at Peck Park at the day of the shooting, but no police initially. There were two events, a baseball game that was permitted, and an informal gathering of car enthusiasts without a permit.
Deanne Dedmon, region superintendent for the pacific region for the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, explained that her department oversees 559 parks. None of the parks have dedicated law enforcement, they rely on the LAPD and the park rangers.
“We have to call and ask for enforcement, just like the general public,” Dedmon said.
For bigger events, LAPD will be there for security. Some parks have at least one full-time staff member, and it is their responsibility to grant permits for events at their respective parks. For small events, the department wants two weeks’ notice. For larger events, the department asks for three to six months’ notice.
“For more complicated larger events, anything more than just a field permit or a picnic … we do internal meetings as well, and meetings with the permittee, including our department maintenance and our construction staff, with LAPD, with our park rangers, with the fire department, with bureau of street services, with DOT,” Dedmon said. “All of these other departments have to be notified and are part of helping us make decisions on what we permit and how we permit a special event.”
Dedmon said the permitting process does not need to be improved, except that more people need to use permits.
“People need to understand that they need to have a permit,” Dedmon said. “People need to understand they need to come to us and actually let us know what they want to do in our park systems.”
Dedmon said that enforcing the permits is always difficult because of a lack of resources. She said that both the LAPD and park rangers are understaffed in the Harbor Area.
“The more we can do to get more officers down in this area, I think the better we will be,” Dedmon said.
Dedmon said that staff at the parks will call the police if they see events without permits, but only Monday through Saturday, as none of the parks have staff on Sunday. She said that the community should call the police if they witness such events happening on Sunday, or at a park with no staff.
Dedmon said there was staff on duty at Peck Park on July 24, when the shooting took place. They helped people shelter in place, and helped open the facilities for LAPD and SWAT teams.
Paul Ulmon, senior lead officer with the LAPD Harbor Division, said that calls to the police are coded based on priority. He said callers should accurately describe what the problem is, and the level of danger, so that the call is coded correctly.
“You have to remember that the dispatch, they aren’t there, they can’t see anything,” Ulmon said. “So, you really have to provide a lot of details to the dispatcher, so they relay that information to both say, our division, harbor division, and security services division.”
Sgt. William Manlove of the LAPD Harbor Division said that whenever a large event is planned, his department will meet with the organizer of the event, as well as parks and recreation, the Council District 15 office, and the park rangers.
“We do a checkdown list, and see exactly how many people are going to show up, what’s the activity there, is there going to be alcohol involved, what kind of folks are going to be showing up,” Manlove said. “And that’s going to allow us to determine what type of resources, what our response from LAPD is going to be.”
Ulmon said that sometimes if there isn’t enough staffing for officers to be at an event through its entirety, they will drive by a few times.
Manlove said the LAPD will push back a lot on what they allow to happen at events. For instance, the LAPD will sometimes not allow a large event to have alcohol. However, the LAPD cannot prevent an event from happening at all, as the Department of Parks and Recreation makes the decision whether to grant permits to events.
“They’re going to approve these events, but it’s a matter of how do we make it safer,” Manlove said.
Ultimately, the meeting ended with a lot of questions answered, but with the most important one — how a shooting like Peck Park could be prevented in the future — still unaddressed.