After a rash of complaints from neighbors in North Beach, SFPD Central Station began Operation Sober Square in February to rein in some of worst perpetrators who drink, fight, yell obscenities and urinate openly in Washington Square Park.
And it appears it's making a difference.
Aaron Brooks was arraigned this afternoon in the Hall of Justice's Superior Court. He was charged with a misdemeanor public nuisance and given a "stay away" order for the park and a block in each direction, said Deputy District Attorney Karen Catalona.
"The judge released him on his own recognizance," she said. "I argued for bail."
Catalona said she made the case in part thanks to plenty of input from neighbors, which allowed her to give the judge a thick file of documentation showing their concerns, along with his prolific arrest record.
"We reached out to people in the neighborhood around Washington Square Park who’ve had dealings with this guy," she said. "This isn’t a one-time thing; this is a pattern of behavior. Let me show you six, seven incidents, then it becomes a much stronger case.”
SFPD Central Station Capt. David Lazar launched the effort after hearing from a neighbor at his monthly captain's meeting in January. “A dad stood up and said he no longer feels safe to go to the park; he doesn’t bring his children there; and because of that, he’s thinking of moving out of the area,” Capt. Lazar said.
Both emphasize that treatment—not punishment—and improving the park are the goals.
"It’s a misdemeanor, so this isn’t a situation where he could go to prison," Catalona said. "I think what we are looking for is, we’d like to have him on probation, we’d like to have a stay-away from the park and we’d like to have, as a condition of his probation, treatment for alcohol abuse."
"The primary goal is, the person gets the help he needs," Capt. Lazar said. "The secondary goal, we get a stay-away order so the behavior will cease in the park."
The effort has been welcome in the community.
"It started getting out of control about six, seven months ago really bad," said David Burbank, a longtime North Beach resident who works across the street from the park.
“The neighbors were pretty much fed up with it," he added. "It was so bad you didn’t want to have your kids there. They were urinating openly in the trash cans and the bushes; fighting.”
Now, Burbank said, "It’s going very well. It calmed down quite a bit. You’ve still got a few people who are troublemakers, but they’re on their way out because we have all informed the police what’s happening." He added, "One individual has been sober three weeks because of it."
But at least one neighbor said there's still room for improvement. “It’s going back to being the same old Washington Square Park because the cops have stopped going to the park," said Burbank's friend David Sisco. "The drunks are returning.”
He added, "I’m a dog walker. I'm in Washington Square Park five, six hours a day, so I see them more often than David (Burbank) coming every couple hours."
Sisco said it's better than it used to be, but he's still seeing some of the worst offenders urinating in front of people, even children, as well as fighting and screaming obscenities.
He said a lot of children use the park now that Joe DiMaggio Playground is closed for renovations, and it's sad to see them and others affected. "They terrorize the people doing tai chi," he said. “No one person should be denying anybody the right to use the park,” he said.
Tai chi in Washington Square Park. (Photo: vince.k/Flickr)
