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Bianca Schutt
Professor Maria Turnmeyer
Asian American Studies 113B
12 February, 2015
Responsibility to the Community
Sylmar, California is known for its perfect hang gliding weather and Labor Day weekend,
Olive Festival. Sylmar Park is a public recreational facility located in the city of Sylmar. This
park is responsible for providing a safe place for the community to gather and have a good time.
However, Sylmar park is being neglected by the community and the city, which has lead to the
park being unclean and unsafe. The park is covered with trash because there are not many trash
and recycling bins. Trash also affects the animals we share the park with. Additionally, most of
the walls, restrooms, and signs have tagging on them and when they do get painted over ,still
looks very unpleasant. Besides the parks filthy environment, there are no park rangers to keep
visitors of the park, protected. Without park rangers violence and drugs occur much often than
it should. There is a lack of community involvement to recognise and improve the parks issues.
The park is not receiving enough money to fix or enhance the park.
Every park gets some sort of trash on the ground, but the difference between Sylmar park
and parks in areas like Northridge is how quickly and efficiently it is taken care of. Sylmar park
consistently has garbage on the ground because there are very few trash and recycling cans and
no park employees to clean the park up.This affects the small animals in the
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parks like birds, squirrels, and skunks. Trash creates a dirty environment for animals and can
be very bad for animals if they eat the trash. Now most people would not care too much about
skunks because of their horrendous odor but skunks help take care of the park by eating rats,
mice, gophers, and even cockroaches and they do this all at night when most people aren't at the
park. We must remember that we share the space with animals and we should keep it clean for
them.
According to the article Protecting Wildlife from Trash by Roberta C.Barbalace,
Discarded food can also become contaminated with microorganisms that cause food poisoning.
More likely, however, the wild animals will become accustomed to free handouts and be
unprepared to hunt for themselves if the source of human food is cut off. The trash in Sylmar
park, make animals sick and change their eating routine. Because we share the land with animals
it is essential that we make sure we are not changing their environment in a negative way.
Explained in The life story of a skunk, an article written by Casey Constance, skunks are
beneficial to humans due to the fact that their diet consists of animals or insects we consider
pests or harmful. For example, rats nestlings, snakes, and cockroaches. Having skunks in Sylmar
park at night is beneficial to us so, we must keep our parks trash free so that skunks do not get
sick from the trash we leave behind, but instead continue to take care of these other insects and
animals for us. This also applies to all the other animals in the park that are affected by the dirty
park.
Not only is garbage contributing to the Sylmar parks uncleanliness, but so is the graffiti.
At Sylmar park there is graffiti all over the walls down to the bathroom stalls. When the park
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does decide to paint over it or wash it off they often do a very poor job. Tagging invites
everyone who goes to this park to mistreat it and not do their part to keep it clean. Graffiti
suggests that gang related events take place at this park even though it is untrue. These wall
scribbles affect the way others view the Sylmar community. As described in Graffiti Has
Negative Impact, Graffiti can create an negative image. In fact, the whole image of the
community can be changed with tagging. Tagging in Sylmar park has created this gloomy
appearance for the community around it. This gives a false representation of what the people of
the community are like.
Not only is an unclean park bad for the community, but an unsafe park is even worse.
Unsafe as in exposure to drugs, violence, and no protection. Sylmar park does not have park
rangers of their own. This gives everyone the chance to do whatever they want at the park. This
park is a place where high school students go to use harmful drugs. This is a very important
matter because these high school students influence the elementary and middle school students
going to the park. The three schools are very close to each other and the park enables these
elementary and middle school students to be exposed to many harmful drugs. The lack of park
police also allows for drug users on illegal narcotics to be in a park where they can potentially
hurt or harass families. Without park rangers homeless store their belongings and sleep behind
the park recreational building right next to the children's building. This is potential danger for
children.
Another reason Sylmar park is dangerous, is because of its poor lighting. At night when
people pass through the park they can trip on something on the ground and hurt themselves or be
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potential prey for people who commit crime. For one thing, the grass in sylmar park is very
uneven and rough which can lead to potentially twisting an ankle especially if you can not see
the ground. Spaces with little to no lighting are prone to more unsafe actions. From personal
experience, compared to El Cariso park in Sylmar, Sylmar park is far more dangerous because
of the parks lack of lighting. Even though El Cariso has much more land, the excellent lighting
makes for a more safe park.

These pictures demonstrate the differences in lighting at Sylmar park and El Cariso. The
picture on the left is Sylmar park . The picture on the right is El Cariso park. Both pictures were
taken at 10 oclock pm.
As reported by Project for Public Spaces in What Role can Design Play in Creating Safer
Parks? Having lighting in parks creates a safe feeling to visitors of the park. According to
Project for Public Spaces Clear sightlines allows park users to ability to verify the presence of
persons which they might find threatening.. At Sylmar park being able to see potential danger is
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very important in case of an emergency ,because there are schools around the park. For example,
if someone aggressively mugs a student at the park at night and he or she needs to describe
the muggers appearance to police, it would be useful to be able to recognise the criminals
appearance.
According to article The psychological influence of the police uniform by
Richard R. Johnson ,Ph.D. in Criminal Justice , research shows that people feel safer with police.
In a study people were asked to categorizes 25 different work uniforms into different emotions
felt towards those uniforms. The police uniform consistently ranked the feeling of safety. People
need an officer so not only can they feel safe, but know that they are safe.
Another experiment conducted by psychologist Dr. Leonard Bickman, showed that
pedestrians are more willing to do what is asked by people dressed in police style clothing. A
research assistant dressed in a milkmans uniform, casual street clothes, and a grey police- style
uniform and asked random citizens to perform small tasks. Only the police style clothing had
a high rate of compliance. If just the difference in clothing can make a person feel safe, then
having police in public parks can make visitors of the park feel protected. In addition, if a police
uniform can make people feel the need to comply with law enforcement less criminal activity
would occur in the park because drug abusers would try to avoid law enforcement.
Some may argue that Sylmar park does not need change because it is not that bad, and
that some families still enjoy walking through the park. I agree that the park is not terrible
however, not that bad is not good enough. By saying the park is not that bad, it is implied that
an ok park is good enough for the community when in fact, the Sylmar area deserves better.
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Sylmar deserves better because everyone is equal and when our park is not as good as normal
parks, for example, in Northridge, that shows that the community around those park have more
value than the community around Sylmar park. In addition, families might enjoy walking
through the park and staying for an hour or two but that is mostly due to families being unaware
of the issues and how bad the circumstances are because the park does not make a big deal about
the parks problems.
The park is where I would like to go to relax and have a picnic with my friends without a
care in the world. I would like to see families having a barbecue or family gatherings. This park
is important to me because I want it to reflect the possibilities of this community rather than a
place for bad happenings to occur. I want this park to be the same as other parks because the
sylmar community deserves it just as much as any other neighborhood. As a child my parents
mostly took me to El Cariso park instead of Sylmar park because of the safety and cleanliness
issues. I have no fond memories of playing or relaxing at Sylmar park. When I was younger I
never thought of it as a fun park to play with my friends. If Mayors and city officials truly cared
equally for everyone, in the area they are responsible for, every park would look the same and
have the same safe environment. This is important for everyone to know because these are the
small steps to bettering the environment, state, and even country. If all Parks were safe and clean
it would make a huge difference to all communities, but it is these small steps we must take first.
Sylmar park has the potential to be a good park like Northridge or Granada Hills.
Walk in your neighborhood park and decide if you feel safe. If you do, imagine what it would be
like to be in that park and feel unsafe. Picture the feeling of not wanting to be in that space
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because it was disgustingly dirty and no one was there to clean it up. Try to remember a time
when you felt unsafe and imagine you felt that way in you neighborhood park. A park can
create special memories with family and friends, however it would be rather difficult to create
these extraordinary moments when all you have are memories of garbage and violence. This
is relevant to you so in the future you can determine for yourself if your nearest recreational
park is not safe or unclean. One way the community can be involved is to just pick up after
themselves before leaving the park. Another way to be involved is to attend city meetings
and speak out and spread idea of bettering the Sylmar park. Lastly, to help improve the park,
speaking with the park manager and directly pointing out what the park needs to improve on, can
be very helpful by informing him or her on matters that they have not noticed.

Work cited
Johnson, Richard. "The Psychological Influence of the Police Uniform." PoliceOne. 4 Mar.
2005. Web. 11 Feb. 2015. <http://www.policeone.com/police-products/apparel/undergear/
articles/99417-The-psychological-influence-of-the-police-uniform/>.

Web. 11 Feb. 2015. <https://www.utoledo.edu/csjhs/criminaljustice/pdfs/Johnson

Vitae.pdf.pdf>.

Roberta C. Barbalace. Protecting Wildlife from Trash. EnvironmentalChemistry.com. 1999.

Accessed on-line: 2/11/2015

http://EnvironmentalChemistry.com/yogi/hazmat/articles/trash.html.Casey, Constance. "The

Life Story of a Skunk." Slate.com. 12 Oct. 2009. Web. 11 Feb. 2015. <http://
www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2009/10/skunks.html>.

"What Role Can Design Play in Creating Safer Parks?" Project for Public Spaces. Web.
11 Feb. 2015. <http://www.pps.org/reference/what-role-can-design-play-in-creating-saferparks/>.
"Graffiti Has Negative Impact." Daily Herald Tribune. 8 Oct. 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.
<http://www.dailyheraldtribune.com/2010/10/08/graffiti-has-negative-impact>.