Action News Jax Investigates: Thousands of police callouts at Jacksonville city parks

An Action News Jax investigation has determined that there were nearly 9,000 police callouts at Jacksonville's parks in 2017. That's nearly 24 calls a day to the city's parks, boat ramps and pools.

We’ve covered several high-profile crimes at parks, including the killing of a pregnant woman. Police say Ramona Soloman was shot and killed in June on the basketball court at Juliuis Guinyard Park in the Hogan’s Creek area. That case remains unsolved.

Other recent incidents, while not violent, are cause for concern among parents. In early July, Action News Jax reported on a case where a man was seen blindfolded, wearing next to nothing, tied to a tree at Big Talbot Island State Park. For the first time, we're hearing from the woman who called 911. She didn't want to be identified.

“Oh my God! Indecent exposure on the beach! There's kids not even 15 feet away from him!” “…Just grossed out, disturbed, why are you doing this on our beach of all places Why are you filming it?”

Jacksonville police would tell us he turned out to be a teacher doing an art project. Officers charged him with trespassing.

In February, Travis Alexander was arrested after police say he was masturbating in front of a group of children at Four Corners Park in Murray Hill.

Action News Jax submitted nearly four hundred public records requests and spent days crunching through the data. In 2017, there were nearly 9,000 police callouts at city parks. In order to get a clear picture of police activity at city parks, we drilled down the numbers even more.

We removed callouts concerning traffic crashes, traffic stops, and other incidents that didn’t happen at the park. We also took out parks that share an address with a school. It’s because we couldn’t say for sure if a callout was related to the park, versus the school. After paring down that data, we were left with just under 1,600 police callouts. These were for serious calls such as shootings, robberies, sexual batteries, a body found and more.

The data we were left with revealed which parks had the most police callouts. At the top of the list was Riverside Park with 78 police callouts. Next on the list was Mandarin Park, with 62 police callouts, including three for guns being fired.

Here’s a look at the rest of the top 20 parks for police callouts:

The police callouts for all local parks can be seen by clicking here.

The City Of Jacksonville says it is taking steps to increase safety. Some parks have officers who live on the grounds. Others hire security. A previous Action News Jax investigation demonstrated how local sports fields are kept locked to prevent crimes such as vandalism. While the numbers don't necessarily mean people are not safe in their favorite park, they're a reminder that crime can happen anywhere, in any zip code.

Cox Media Group