Paraphernalia in the Park

A News Flash from the Bay Area that you will never hear on a San Francisco radio or T.V. station. It comes from a friend, who is preparing his phd thesis, while living adjacent to Golden Gate Park, where he occasionally visits to decompress from his project.

Seems that my friend routinely comes upon discarded hypodermic needles and the occasional crack pipe strewn about the park. As any good citizen, he reports these sightings on the Park website, provided so that Park employees can dispose of these potential hazards.

However after a recent sighting his findings remained for several days ignored. Subsequent to his repeated reports with a defined location of the offending hypos--the last with GPS co-ordinates, which would put one within a foot of the items--he was informed that he was free to remove the items himself if it bothered him so much.

Not one to take a slight lightly, my friend responded with chapter, line and verse of the Park ordinances which specifically prohibits anyone other than Park employees, government officials or law enforcement from removing anything--trash included--from the Park. Additionally, he pointed out that while it wasn’t his job to either “police” the Park trash, or cite Park regulations to Park officials.

And as an interesting and poignant aside, he asked the Park Director if she would bail him out of jail, when he was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia, even though he would tell the arresting officer that he had just found the hypo and was disposing it, or was she prepared to provide health care to a child who infected themselves with a contaminated needle?
Needless to say, park employees were observed the next day picking up the offending debris, while the Park Director forwarded this final message:

"This ‘parkscan’ does not have sufficient location information to instruct aworker to find one glass crack pipe. I am going to assume that it is gone,through normal cleaning. If it is still there, you can let me know with morespecifics. I asked you to please consider throwing it away yourself, to savethe multiple steps involved in ‘parkscan‘. Many people do contribute to thecommon wellbeing by doing a little extra on occasion. I am sorry that youwere offended by my suggestion."

No folks, you cannot make this up. Your tax dollars at work.