LAPD commander says Watts Towers may be the only viable place for a Watts skate park

Capt. Phillip Tingirides of the Los Angeles Police Department says he understands why people who cherish the Watts Towers as a work of art, as a landmark and as one of the few attractions that can pull tourists into Watts are unhappy with a proposal to install a $350,000 skateboarding park in the towers’ shadow.

"I get their concerns," says Tingirides, commander of the LAPD’s Southeast area, which includes Watts. "The towers is one of the only places where people come from other places to see Watts, and they don’t want to lose that" or see visitors’ experience diminished by noise and tumult.

Indeed, it’s not uncommon to hear Watts Towers advocates wonder if anybody would ever consider plunking a skate park in Hancock Park, next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or beside some other comparable cultural attraction. Ted Watkins Memorial Park, which is for active recreation, including a community pool, is just a few blocks away, some note. Why not put the skate park there?

But spend 15 or 20 minutes talking with Capt. Tingirides, and you quickly become aware of some reasons why it's not so simple. If Watts is to have a major skate park in the near future, he says, the towers-adjacent site may have to be it.

On a bureaucratic level, Tingirides said, Ted Watkins Park poses problems because it's an island of county-owned land amid a sea of L.A. city streets; the LAPD doesn’t normally answer calls there, he said, and the distance to the nearest sheriff’s station and regular patrol routes means that response times tend to be longer. So adding a skate park under the current jurisdictional realities could make the policing challenges tougher.

But it’s the psychic topography of a gang-ridden landscape, Tingirides says, that makes the Watts Towers site the only publicly owned parcel where most neighborhood kids would feel safe making the trip.

A big chunk of a Watts skate park’s target audience, Tingirides said, would be students at Markham Middle School, which is just across the Blue Line tracks from the the strip of parkland occupied by the towers and the nearby Watts Towers Arts Center and Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center. No gang claims the intervening sidewalks or the foot bridge over the tracks.

Put a skate park in Ted Watkins Memorial Park, though, and it becomes a different story. “Five blocks in Watts can be a long way in terms of where people will actually travel,” Tingirides says. “There are so many invisible lines that people won’t cross.” Some of those fall between Markham Middle School and Watkins Park, where the likes of the Hacienda Village Boys, the Hacienda Village Crips and the 99th Street Mafia lay claims along the route. Depending on where a kid lives, Tingirides said, the trip home from Watkins Park also might be complicated by Bounty Hunters, PJs or the Grape Street gang.

"One of my top priorities in working with the community is trying to dissolve those lines," Tingirides said. "It’s such a deep-rooted cultural issue: 'These are lines we just don’t cross.' It’s been so long, through generations."

Erasing those lines doesn’t necessarily involve shrinking the gangs’ turf, he said, but depends instead on persuading people that certain routes are safer than they think.

"Most of the time, if you’re on a main thoroughfare just going from one place to another, not messing with other people, and you’re dressed down" -- that is, not sporting clothing that bespeaks a gang allegiance -- "you’re pretty safe."  The police have had some success with escorting people along certain routes until they begin to realize it’s OK to walk them and add those destinations to their lives’ routine grid. "You have to feel it over and over again, until you trust it."

With time, it might be possible to instill residents with confidence that their children could walk safely from Markham Middle School to skate in Ted Watkins Park, then walk home, Tingirides said.

But should an attractive and needed development in Watts -- a $350,000 skate park funded by donations -- have to wait until the psychic landscape changes?

“Unless they can find someplace else, I would hate to see this thing go by the wayside,” Tingirides said. He wondered whether the skate park could be squeezed into plans for a renovated, artificial-turf soccer field at Markham Middle School that includes "a berm along 108th Street to prevent drive-by shootings."

The proposed skate park, he said, "is a thing that’s direly needed" for kids who crave activities but have few options. "It’s not going to answer all the problems, but it’s something we’ll have." For Tingirides, as things now stand, the parcel by the Watts Towers "is the best spot that the most people are going to use."

-- Mike Boehm

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Towers of power

Photos, from top: Pro skaters Terry Kennedy (center) and Paul Rodriguez (right) and their manager, Circe Wallace, are key backers of a skate park near the Watts Towers. Credit: Ricardo de Aratanha / Los Angeles Times. Conceptual design of Watts Skate Park by Colby Carter of California Skateparks. Credit: California Skateparks

Comments

[John De Salvio]

If that is the design of the skatepark they have in mind, not only is it boring, it appears to have a couple of high noise components as well. Where are the bowls? Half-pipes? It has to be all concrete or it will be noisy.

[Patricia]

Wow, it looks like the LAPD is our new county government. We can only have a skate park where the LAPD says we can have one?

It makes sense, I guess, since they're also editing the LA Times now too these days.

[Curtis Lemanski]

Patricia, I don't think the LAPD is dictating where this park goes. The captain is merely making recommendations based upon the gang lines in the area...I doubt you've ever been down there and probably don't understand it, but those gang lines the captain described are very real and dangerous.

[marshall]

I'm with John here. I love the idea of a Towers-adjacent skatepark, but the design seems a little bit of a sleeper to me.

Why not consult with the San Pedro Skatepark Association on the design. Their Channel Street Skatepark is also in the 15th District, and it's a real winner. A skatepark next to the Towers needs to live up to the excitement that the towers brings, not be a sleepy half-park, half-skatepark.

[Donald Frazell]

I think it's a good idea. Those of us who actually have had kids who are either athletic or skate boarders, a kinda social club actually, know this. While I also support building a series of buildings in the Watts Towers State Park as a Music Museum of the America's, click my name above, they would be compatiable. Kids need a safe place to hang out, and as with all skate partks, should have a police cruiser drive by from time to time. It is amazing what a unpredictabler physical presence can do to maintain the peace.

And also I would most certainly support a skate park in Hancock Park. Instead of a giant levitating pet rock or hanging full size choo choo train, this would make far more sense, and be good for us as parents, kids, and people with good souls. Haters and the self absorbed be damned, which would be most of the self expression, vanity arts community.

art collegia delenda est

[oldusedcop]

How is it that a cash-strapped city can afford to build a skate park on an obscure street in an area admittedly surrounded by gangs and crime but can't fill potholes in the city streets?

[Evelyn Davis]

This is a terrible idea. Putting a skate board park next to a precious work of art is just begging for trouble. Has LAPD thought about taking a poll of the neighborhood to see what the residents and users of the Watts Towers Arts Center and adjacent Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center think about this? And what about the annual Day of the Drum and Simon Rodia Jazz Festivals in September? This year, more than 7,000 people enjoyed these two festivals. So LAPD is saying that putting in a skateboard park would NOT be a problem. I beg to differ!

[Donald Frazell]

I lovetNuestrro Pueblo and just gave hell to the LaCMA people for using them as PR, theyhave no plans or money, its the usual lip service, while the Towrs decay.
However, one weekend a year doesnt make up for a whole year to keep kids out of trouble. The music is louder and more damaging to the towers than skaaate boaards, none really. There is more to life than art, and if art is not of life, it is useless.

[Pablito]

@ oldusedcop...you clearly missed the line that says this is "a $350,000 skate park funded by donations"

@ Evelyn...would you rather the kids just stayed on the streets instead?

[Watts Up!]

It's pretty funny that some people actually think Tingarides dictates where this park will be built. Although he has his own issues, he's trying to inject a little common sense into the community. Sure, it's a waste of money...but it's better than the other bright ideas that have failed miserably. Gang(ster) interventionists, video cameras in the projects, Sweet Alice's home makeover (it makes a fabulous Grape St Crip clubhouse!). When the people that come down to visit the 80 foot pile of old coat hangars and broken shaving mirrors happen to see the adjacent skate park, it can't help but benefit the reputation of Watts.

[mikeg]

Why does this guy care? he says in the article that the l.a.p.d. doesn't typically respond there, why would they? It's only a "gang ridden landscape " where childern are afraid to walk because of invisible (gang) lines. Why should the l.a.p.d. have a presence? He states that they don't respond , so what does he care about the policing challanges becoming tougher it doesn't seem like their policing in watts, maybe thats why there is so much crime? and people are afraid to walk the streets. think about it!! more economic segregation .I bet they don't have this problem in bel air. I live in a place where we have to many cpos ,no crime when i moved here (4 cops then, same population ,60 cops now, still no crime, you just have to worry about the cops now.) sounds like we should send some of our cops to watts, but then i guess they would have to earn there pay by protecting citizens not just bullying them.

[Will C]

I'm certainly not against resources and projects that benefit our youth and get them out of the house and active, but Watts Towers has always been a contemplative place for me, and my concern with the placement of the skatepark is that the generated noise from it will ruin the peaceful nature of the landmark. I hope consideration of that impactful aspect is given.

[Larkspur]

I think this will be a great benefit. Skate parks really activate a community and if you give a community something nice they will treat it with respect (it happened in a new skate park built near me in N. Hollywood this summer.)

Watts doesn't benefit from tourists who zip in, take some photos of the towers, and zip back out. Might as well build something there that will benefit the whole community.

[Will C]

It doesn't get more disconcerting than Watts Up! demeaning and diminishing the amazing work of Sabato Rodia as "...the 80 foot pile of old coat hangars and broken shaving mirrors," while elevating a skatepark as a reputation raiser for the community.

[Donald Frazell]

Right now, yeah, tourists zip in and out as they are scary, and few the locals as nonhuman. However, click on my name and read my blog, i have a way to get people to stay and spend some dough in the park, being backed by Rev. Chip Murray of FAME, now chairing the ethics and religion chair at USC. Can have food trucks, and bring in tours, which LACMA and the Getty are too lazy to do. If its not something for them, they aint gonna do it, even though it is their very job description. Not saying what art is, bur preserving and showing it.

[rick]

The Watts Towers are a world treasure that the city of Los Angeles has neglected throughout their history. This is a terrible idea. Why not pour more money into the art center and encourage neighborhood kids to hang out there? Let's face it, a skate park is mostly for boys. Can we create a community center that is for everybody in the community--men, women, young and old?

[Pete Malloy]

LAPD doesn't know anything about skate parks. On the surface having a place for kids to ride sounds good but it has many underlining problems. 1) Recreation and Parks control skate parks. 2) Watts towers complex is controlled by the Department of General Services. 3) General Services has its own police force that patrols all city parks, libraries and city facilities. Those police officers respond to skate parks for juvenile disturbance, noise and nuisance calls. And there are many. . .

LAPD wont respond to these types of calls because they don't have enough units and those type of disturbances are not high enough priority. So, before nearby residents of Watts think a skate park is a good idea, you better check with communities that currently have skate parks to see what kind of problems they have. They'll find that LAPD isn't solving any of those problems. . .

[Donald Frazell]

From what i have seen, here in the LBC and Culver City, no chains and knives at skate parks, Adam 12. Kids get along fine as it is more social club than actual skating, but always need to cruise any event with more than two boys hanging out, just as a reminder. Cliques can form, and animosities, just let em know the are watched, and should be fine. Art is about mind, body and soul, anyone one weakness affects the others. Balance is key.

[Evelyn Davis]

Can families living in Watts afford buy the skateboards, helmuts, kneepads, and elbow pads for their kids in this economy? I went online and the cost for just a board - on sale - is between $49 - $125. Are neighborhood residents asking for a skateboard park anywhere in Watts?

Just because someone is willing to donate money for a skateboard park doesn't constitute a need - or want - by citizens of Watts. There has to be a need. This is just wrong-headed.

[Jesse]

The Police Chief is just making a recommendation based on gang territory information.
The skatepark is a great idea since it keeps a critical age group doing something outside (exercising) and hopefully keeping them away from gang activities. Another traditional park would be an awful idea because it largely wont be used and just be empty space which will be eventually used by gangs to establish a spearhead.
Its pretty much exclusively private money not city money which is being donated so the waste of city money argument doesnt hold water.
Neither does the lack of users argument since anyone who has actually has been to south central knows there is a skateboarding community. Their boards and shoes may not be as brand spanking new as their suburban counterparts but they still skateboard. The cant afford a skateboard argument is complete bunk; even favellas in brazil have had skateboarders.

I do think its sad and ironic that such a traditionally poverty and gang violence stricken neighborhood fears change and is fighting against something that suburban neighborhoods would wish they could have just had donated to them rather than having to put city money in for a skatepark.