Vandalism on the rise at Colorado Springs parks, putting strain on staff

A recent uptick in park vandalism in Colorado Springs is putting a strain on the city’s parks staff and has triggered an increase in security in recent years, according to officials.

Over the summer, several parks were vandalized with graffiti and public property was destroyed, a phenomenon park officials said has stretched the city’s Parks and Recreation and Cultural Service Department staff and budget thin.

One recent example of the vandalism came last week at John Venezia Park, where vandals spray-painted politically charged graffiti on sidewalks, smashed lights and ripped a water fountain out of a wall, causing around $16,000 in damages. Repairs could take months.

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“There’s a lead time of a month or more to get those fixtures back in place, and then we have to pay for them to be installed,” park Maintenance and Operations Manager Kurt Schroeder said. “It’s a problem that a lot of people are having for you name it, as far as supply chain and all that, as a result of the pandemic.”

Those repairs, Schroeder said, come from the parks department’s already cash-strapped budget, which in October 2020 was found to be suffering from a nearly $270 million backlog in funding.

The repairs needed to restore parks from vandalism, Schroeder said, only exacerbates the department’s budget problems, forcing them to place routine projects designed to fix parks after normal wear-and-tear on hold.

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But fixing damage to park facilities isn’t the only way vandals have put a strain on the system.

In August, vandals defaced several monuments at Memorial Park, painting anti-police rhetoric on a peace officers memorial and covering sections of the veterans memorial in profanity.

Public property that’s tagged with graffiti, which Schroeder said is more common than the destruction seen at John Venezia Park, isn’t as costly to repair — usually it’s just a matter of painting over it, stripping the graffiti off with chemicals or blasting it away.

However, the time staff take to remove the graffiti often keeps them from their other responsibilities, stalling other projects and draining more money from the department’s budget.

“We have many, many, many needs out in the park system, from just the age of our system and the normal use — appropriate use — that it gets,” he said. “When we encounter something like this, that just takes time away from other duties.”

Police are only able to help so much to put a stop to the vandalism, Schroeder said, citing the “many” calls they also field on a daily basis.

Many city parks also don’t have security cameras watching park-goers, police have said, further limiting their ability to investigate.

To help curb the vandalism, the department has increased the amount of security in recent years through enforced closing times and gates that close when the park does. That’s happened at several parks in Colorado Springs, including Palmer, Garden of the Gods and Rampart parks.

Memorial Park, Schroeder said, will soon be added to that list.

Park gates, along with the security services the city enlists to flush people out of parks at closing time, have helped to cut down on vandalism, but they aren’t an “end-all” solution, Schroeder said, citing the fact that John Venezia Park, which also has a gate, was partially defaced during normal hours of operation.

For that reason, Schroeder urged vandals to think of the park as a community resource, and not just as city property.

“When you’re out there vandalizing a park like at John Venezia, you’re not just damaging the park, it’s a crime against 450,000 people,” Schroeder said. “We all own the parks and we all have access to them, so it’s a crime against the whole community.”