Growing up, I always heard rumors and stories about Dickinson parks at night. “That’s where kids go to make out and people go to get high.” Back then, teenage me laughed at that because, of course, I didn’t really care. Whatever you can get away with, I often thought. Now that my family lives across the street from one of Dickinson’s largest public parks, I don’t find it so funny.
I called the Dickinson Police Department three times this summer and made similar calls last summer after witnessing what appear to be drug deals and other suspicious activity taking place in my neighborhood’s park after dark.
One call to police a month ago prompted an officer to drive by and eventually get out of his car to look for two men who had been sitting in one of the park’s many darkened areas for more than an hour. By the time he got there, they were already gone. I watched as they fl ed on foot as the officer rolled by.
This spring, I was one of the three people who called 911 after finding a severely beaten man who’d been thrown out of a vehicle and onto a street in the middle of a Saturday afternoon as a dozen bystanders enjoyed a warm day in the park.
Many of those bystanders were children. Some were just yards away.
Dustin Monke 