A park security program should place responsibility for safety and order with all park employees — police as well as non-police.

In such a program, ultimate responsibility for safety and order still remains with park or local police who patrol the parks and respond to calls for assistance. Increased attention and coverage, however, can be obtained by placing initial responsibility for park security upon non-police as well as police employees. Thus recreation or park leaders, teachers, maintenance personnel, and others must play a specific role in assuring security of parks.

Where possible, park employees should provide preventive services, resolve and manage conflicts if possible, and generally maintain secure park conditions. To the extent that park employees handle part of the current police work load, park police would be freer to handle serious crimes or further concentrate their own prevention activities. Charging all employees with security responsibilities should prevent some degree of crimes or limit their seriousness.

Such employees should receive training in recognizing conditions that often lead to criminal acts and accidents, in mediating and resolving interpersonal and intergroup conflicts, and in promoting secure conditions.

This approach to park security was suggested in a recent study of five park districts in Illinois.

Illinois parks studied were in the cities and villages of Bellwood, Elmhurst, Rockford, Peoria, and Glenview. Though only five park districts were studied, the report prepared by Public Administration Service has varying degrees of relevance for other park districts in Illinois and other states.

Data collected in the Illinois study showed that serious criminal violations such as homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and narcotics violations were relatively infrequent. Park crimes consisted mainly of property crimes (theft and vandalism), crimes of less serious nature against persons (fighting), and a significant number of traffic incidents.

Usually park services are administered through a park department of a city or county government and police services are provided by the municipal police department. In Illinois, however, park districts are established as municipal corporations—as special districts—with the power to levy taxes, issue bonds, acquire land, contract for services, and employ staff to administer park and recreation services. The Illinois park district often contains within its corporate boundaries parts or all of several local governments, including county governments.

A continuing and perplexing problem for park district management is whether to develop its own police force or to utilize the services of the police of one or more municipal or county governments located within the park district. A systematic decision making technique was developed in the course of the Public Administration Service Study, to assist park managers in the selection of the best source of police services for their park district. The approach explicitly recognized that no a priori position should be taken and that selection of the source of police services should be tailored to the unique set of circumstances which characterize the individual park districts.

The decision - making technique requires completion of several phases:

1. Defining the factors which contribute to effective park police services.
For example, rigid but realistic personnel qualifications, adequately trained and experienced personnel, full-time availability of police personnel, sufficient funds for police service, are a few of the factors essential to effective police service.

Jerome A. Needle is a management specialist for the Public Administration Service in Chicago.

Illinois Parks and Recreation    12    May/June, 1971

2. Comparing the current potential capabilities of the park district with reference to the factors previously defined.
For example, it must be determined whether the park district can or cannot recruit police personnel which meet high qualification standards; it must be established whether personnel would or would not be available during all hours when police personnel would be needed; it must be established whether the park district can finance a police system of desire, scope and quality.

3. Comparing the current and potential capabilities of alternative police service arrangements, e.g. contract policing with a municipality within the park district, with reference to the factors previously identified. This step repeats step 2, but evaluates capabilities of alternative police service systems rather than capabilities of the park district itself.

4. Comparing the park capabilities with the capabilities of alternative police service arrangements and determining which service arrangement offers the best potential for provision of effective police services.

Comparison of alternative means for acquiring police services employing the technique just described lends a large degree of structure and rationality to the decision-making process.

It may be of interest to note that the special district arrangement, characterized as it is by provisions of a police service to populations receiving police service from another government, results in a high degree of interaction with and dependence upon the police system(s) of one or more jurisdictions within park district boundaries. A high degree of cooperation with virtually no conflict was observed during the study among park districts and local governments.

Illinois Parks and Recreation    13    May/June, 1971