Paterson spent $200,000 renovating a park. Drug addicts use it

PATERSON — Victoria Henderson, 24, who has a son with autism, heard that Roberto Clemente Park had new playground equipment for autistic children. Soon, the park became a gathering place where she and her wife, Lakeisha, could meet other parents of children with special needs.

Mayor Andre Sayegh's administration had invested more than $200,000 in the new jungle gym and other improvements to a park that had long had drug problems.

But even in the three years since the opening of the new playground in the 5th district, the drug plague in Roberto Clemente Park continued.

The story continues below the photo gallery.

On her way to work, Henderson says, she often saw addicts sleeping on playground equipment and bathing in sprinklers where children should be playing. The paddling pool drain is often clogged with dirt, causing the water to stagnate.

Henderson said her 8-year-old son, like many autistic children, enjoys tactile stimulation and used to love playing in the water, but his mothers stopped letting him do that because they were worried he might get sick playing in strangers' bathwater.

“My son likes to touch things and put them in his mouth, so we have to focus on what he is doing,” Henderson said.

Drug paraphernalia, discarded garbage bags

Addicts sometimes leave drug paraphernalia behind, which worries Henderson. One of the reasons she's comfortable letting her child continue to play there is that a local homeless man cleans the playground in the mornings.

“He does more than the public works department,” Henderson said. “It's thanks to him that this whole park is clean.”

The person Henderson was talking about is Rolando Vasquez, a 44-year-old Paterson native who sleeps under the gazebo with his pit bull named Luna and his pet iguana named Ibeji. When strangers approach their makeshift shelter, the dog growls, but his owner calms him down. “I would never use them in my defense,” he said.

The gazebo was one of the park's original features when it was built in 1913 on land formerly used as a cemetery. The structure, which is missing wooden beams, appears to be on the verge of collapse, but the city has not allocated any money for renovation.

“When it rains, there will be no shelter for God knows how long,” Vasquez said.

Vasquez said he gets up before sunrise and begins his daily ritual of picking up trash and sweeping the property. “Cleaning is my drug,” he said.

But there is trash that accumulates so quickly that Vasquez can't keep up with it. He showed a visitor large black garbage bags piled up near the entrance steps at the corner of Oak and Essex Streets, which he said were caused by illegal dumping.

“People drive through Paterson and see the garbage and the drug users,” he said. “People who come through here shouldn't have that impression.”

Artfully designed walking paths, pond for ice skating

The park, formerly called Sandy Hill Park, opened in 1913 and stretched from Market Street to Cedar Street. Typical of the late Victorian era, it featured elaborate walkways and a pond used for ice skating, according to reports in the Morning Call.

The construction of Public School 15 and a sports stadium reduced the park to half its original size and the pond was lost, but the broad canopy of century-old plane trees near Market Street reminds us of what once was.

The park behind the school used to have basketball courts. The free throw lines have faded and the backboards and baskets have been removed. Concrete fills the holes where the posts used to hold up the backboards. Weeds grow through the cracks in the asphalt.

Drug users: “the walking dead”

Ronald Kautz, who has lived in the city his entire life and was recently walking his dog in the park on Market Street, said that the situation at Roberto Clemente has improved since the renovation, despite ongoing problems with drugs and prostitution.

“I call them the walking dead,” the 72-year-old said of the drug users in the neighborhood. “It used to be really bad. I've had the windows of my car smashed.”

Kautz recalls one overdose death in the park. His girlfriend was once chased away from the gazebo while walking the dog. But drug users have found other places to inject their narcotics since Vasquez called the park home.

As Kautz spoke, he pointed to a neighborhood sex worker who appeared to be dazed.

“She's a nice person – but sometimes she screams and breaks bottles,” said Kautz. “She needs medication.”

Paterson spent $200,000 renovating a park. Drug addicts use it

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