On a hot, sunny Sunday in Grants Pass, Park Watch members in red T-shirts spread out across Riverside Park, carrying gloves, garbage bags and trash grabbers. Subway sandwiches await them when they finish.
Brock Spurgeon started the group with the goal of keeping the parks safe, clean and drug-free.
“I was raised by a drug addict, and my brother was a drug addict, and my son is a current drug addict here in town. So I find the same stuff at home that I find here,” Spurgeon said.
The park once offered an escape, he said.
“I used to go to the park to get away from it at my house, and I come out to the park, and it's here too.”
Park Watch has received some pushback and been called vigilantes because members film people doing drugs in the parks and call the police.
“It sends a message, though, because when the police show up, when we call, it lets them know that the community's working together and trying to make a change,” Spurgeon said. “We can't fix the drug problem or the homeless problem, but we can ask people not to use drugs in the park.”
Del Aldridge, who has also lost relatives to drug addiction, insists they’re just trying to discourage illegal activity.
“We have kicked people out of the group because they have harassed homeless [people],” he said. “We don't tolerate it. We only report. We're like a watch, neighborhood watch.”
Today, volunteers find drug paraphernalia, mostly down by the river.
Spurgeon said they try to find places where people like to hide, like bushes and culverts, pointing out caps and foil.
But it’s not all drug paraphernalia. One volunteer pulls a hammer out of the river. Another picks up a soaked pair of blue jeans. There’s a blanket and pillow, food wrappers and even human feces, which they don’t touch.
Despite their cleanup efforts, Spurgeon said the trash has recently gotten much worse in this park — he estimates by as much as 300%.
That’s because a new homeless shelter recently opened less than a quarter mile up the road.
Parker’s Place Village moves in
Parker’s Place Village is, in many ways, a huge victory for Grants Pass, which has struggled for years with its homelessness crisis.
But Spurgeon doesn’t like the location.
“There's no drug use allowed there, so they walk down the street here,” he said. “But we were ready for it. As soon as we found out it was going to open, we thought our hands were going to be full.”
Elk Island Trading Group Operations Manager Bernie Woodard, who built Parker’s Place Village, thinks the project has become sort of a scapegoat.
“Everything can be pointed easily at Parker's Place Village, but I don't think all the blame is Parker's Place Village,” he said.
The site has rules and frequently kicks out residents who don’t follow them.
But beyond Parker’s Place Village, the homeless landscape in Grants Pass is in a time of transition.
Major changes in Grants Pass
For one thing, the city created a civil exclusion zone this summer to ban people from parts of downtown after being charged with certain crimes, like assault or felonies.
Opening Parker’s Place Village also allowed the city to close its three homeless resting sites, following a lawsuit settlement.
That means 150 homeless folks who were camping in city-owned lots downtown are now housed in converted shipping containers.
Kate Huckert lives across the street from where the resting sites used to be. She said the neighborhood is quieter and more peaceful now, and she rarely has to call the police anymore.
But some problems remain, like abandoned vehicles.
“Our little quiet neighborhood and our small town is back,” she said. “Then we get another round to deal with.”
Her boyfriend, Mike Servant, thinks many issues associated with the camps – like drug use and car camping – have just relocated from downtown to near Parker’s Place Village.
“The people in that neighborhood don't have to put up with the camp that we did. They have an organized, structured, much cleaner, much more rules-based camp,” he said. “But the satellite piece, the camp-associated parts, are just the same.”
Spurgeon worries all this upheaval will lead to more work for his group.
“Right now, there's a lot of people testing the city to find out how far they can go, where they can stay, will they be left alone, where they won't be left alone,” he said. “From our experience, what we do know is if we let them get a foothold here, and they think it's okay to use drugs here every day, then the dealers start coming.”
Grants Pass Police Chief Warren Hensman said the transition has gone relatively smoothly, and police will continue to address problems as they arise.
“We're holding people accountable,” he said. “We're utilizing the exclusion ordinance that the council put into place a while ago. We're continuing to utilize the exclusion ordinances within our park system, and we are holding people accountable to violating the rules.”
So the difficult work continues, of trying to enforce the law, keep the parks clean and get homeless folks into housing.
Woodard said bringing people who lived outside for many years into one shelter has created challenges, particularly for residents who might have avoided one another.
“All of those people have been put into one village, and so we're working on how do we work through all of those personalities and keep things all compliant where people follow rules and how to move each person forward,” he said. “We're doing it. Every day is a challenge.”
At a Wednesday City Council meeting, Mayor Clint Scherf said the council plans to discuss additional precautions and deterrents for public parks at upcoming workshops. Those could include signage, possible gates and an expanded exclusion zone.
Meanwhile, Spurgeon plans to continue the park cleanups until they’re no longer needed.
“If we quit finding drug paraphernalia in the park, we'll just come out with a cooler and a blanket and enjoy the park, like everybody else,” he said.
So far, he thinks the group’s work is making a difference.
