Kendrick Advisory Council Says Police Need To Come To Table

According to Bill Malizia, director of , all the right people are at the table to make some major changes at the facility.

"There is a lot we have to get done, but we have first class people here," he said Thursday at the newly re-formed Kendrick Advisory Committee meeting.

of the facility and how they can be improved.

But there is one party that still has to get to the table, he said - the police.

"It's a group of teenagers doing all the damage around here," he said. "These aren't kids from far away, they're from here."

In the last two weeks four instances were reported and the police only responded to one.

"The problem is kids today just don't care," Beth Strain-Berry, a Roxborough resident, said. "We need a cop to come over here and lock them up, put them in a paddywagon because people are afraid to come here."

And that's the biggest problem, Malizia said.

"The kids just don't have a sense of community," he said. "We need to give them a stake in the place."

Meeting attendees discussed a number of ideas for improving the situation including moving the playground equipment to the front of the building to make it more visible from the street, extend an invitation to the police to attend the committee meeting to better understand the issue or adding more light or video cameras to the outside area.

The rec does have an old, out-dated video system that Malizia said he is looking into upgrading.

"We basically have no police coverage now," Malizia said. "They're not on the pulse of what is going on."

Another issue Strain-Berry said, is that when they respond, the officers do not take it seriously.

"One officers came and didn't even get out of his car," she said. "They need to take these smaller incidents seriously because they can escalate."

Having scheduled patrols to clear out the kids several, or even once a day, would improve the situation, Malizia said.

If they don't he said he is worried about the future of the center.

"That's my biggest concern," he said. "That people are just going to stop coming here."