The major crimes in all park and recreation areas are property crimes. Crimes are most likely to occur: in open park and playground areas of largely attended, urban parks, during the summer and spring, and in the evening hours. These findings provide confirmation that the crime and vandalism found at Corps lakes is typical of a trend throughout the nation. The APRS study also revealed a lack of coordination between park and recreation agencies and local law enforcement and a noticeable amount of crime remaining unreported. 1. Crime in the Nation's Largest Cities--Advance Report. U.S. Department of Justice, LEAA, April 1974. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 3. D. C. Gibbons, "Crime in the Hinterland." Criminology 10 (2): An Analysis of Public Safety as Related to the Incidence of Crimes in Parks and Recreational Areas in Central Cities, Harold Lewis Malt Associates, January 1972. Robert A. Landles, Criminal Activity in Selected Seattle Public Parks, Donald Hasley, et. al.; Law Enforcement Study, Bureau of Land Management, California, July 1971. Roger N. Clark and John C. Hendee; Campbell, Frederick L. "Deprecative Behavior in Forest Campgrounds; An Exploratory Study." WSDA Forest Service Research Note, August, 1971. U.S. News and World Report, June 24, 1974. Daniel Badger and Norman Wolf, Recreation Study and Assessment of ANALYSIS OF THE LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AND CORPS RANGER MANPOWER AT THE LAKES A. Current Staffing Levels Most law enforcement management studies analyze an agency's manpower in terms of workload and productivity. Criteria used in this assessment generally includes patrolmen per beat, calls for service, response time, caseload per investigator, etc. Similar criteria, while present in a limited capacity and form in the Corps organization, nonetheless, lends itself to an internal comparison of manpower utilization. The data in Table 7-1 is presented according to a division of Class A lakes using attendance as the main variable; the lakes are separated as follows: (1) urban lakes with attendance over one million, (2) rural lakes with attendance over one million, (3) urban lakes with attendance under one million, (4) rural lakes with attendance under one million, and (5) all Class B lakes. As the table reflects, recreation use of the A lakes accounted for approximately 75 percent of the Corps annual attendance figures. Recreation use at the urban and rural lakes with attendance over one million accounted for 62 percent of the total alone. The staffing at the lakes presents a similar situation. The lakes with attendance over one million are staffed with 68 percent of the total compliment of permanent rangers. While it is apparent that these largely attended lakes contain the majority of the rangers, the rangers at these lakes also reflect a significantly higher level of productivity than the other lakes. Combining written warnings with citations, it is apparent 56-070 - 75-10 103 that the rangers at the lakes with attendance over one million are responsible for producing 73 percent of all recorded infractions. A closer analysis, reflected in Table 7-2, reveals that an average of 3.69 rangers working the urban lakes with attendance over one million are writing and processing 107 infractions annually or an average of 29.0 per ranger. This workload is exceeded by the rangers at the rural lakes with attendance over one million where an average of 2.41 rangers per lake are writing and processing 95.3 infractions, for an average of 39.5 infractions per ranger. Placing this analysis in perspective, approximately 85 percent of all infractions are committed during the summer season with the majority of these occurring on weekends. Thus, it can be safely stated that even at these largely attended lakes the rangers are averaging one written infraction per day with the smaller lakes producing even less. Comparing this finding to the number of recreation visitors reveals an interesting point. The data in Table 7-2 reveals that peak weekend attendance during the season at the urban and rural lakes with attendance over one million is between 25,418 and 28,148 per ranger. This would mean that out of this number only one person committed an infraction. While these averages obviously contain many extremes, both high and low, it is fairly supportive of the field survey findings that Corps rangers are overwhelmed by visitors and as a result are not capable of properly managing resources and people. This frustration, in terms of not being able to dent the problem, is reflected by the low output. Additionally, the lack of backup management support and "clout" plays a role in diminishing the rangers productivity. In essence the rangers are shying away from the problem or at best relying on verbal warnings. This situation is also apparent, as revealed by Table 7-2, in the finding that the average ranger at the largely attended lakes has between 4.7 and 6 well-developed areas and 8,172 to 16,659 acres to surveil for proper use by recreationists. |