See you Monday

This week, my last week, I was lucky enough to grab lunches with Ranger Town and Chief Schonzeit. They gave me great female perspectives and the story of their careers certainly motivate me further.

On Tuesday I watched the wonderful dispatch ladies at work, and I’m still in awe at the number of programs they simultaneously operate.  A new dispatcher had just finished their background check, so I joined in on their orientation.

From Wednesday on I was back with VRP. A new initiative to more deeply ID everyone we contact was introduced. At a minimum, we ID people by name, but management has asked that we run everyone and have dispatch check NCIC for warrants, repeat offenders, and to make sure people are who they say they are. The obvious con of this would be the inefficiency in calling dispatch constantly, but the pros that motivated the initiative are identifying repeat-offenders of PCS, dog off leash, etc. It also increases our chances of finding hard-crime offenders, like in the past case of Mark Apples.

The homeless population of INDE is exactly what you would expect of a city, and Washington Square is a very common place for people to ‘camp out’- lay out cardboard or blankets, using bags as pillows, anything that turns a bench into sleeping or living quarters. While we have resources that we offer consistency, there's been a greater push to get resources to people in need since winter is approaching.  For example, I spent some time calling different shelters and providers in hopes that we could find assistance for well-known family that frequents Washington Square.

If you live in Philly, you may have seen this incident in the news. A bright orange cat got “stuck” in a tree in the rose garden of our park. Since he had been seen moving to different heights of the tree, we aren’t really sure if he was stuck or just hanging out. A high-reach would have been too difficult to bring into the rose garden, and the ladders we had and that were offered to us by others didn’t quite cut it. The cat was too apprehensive of the crowds below to come down during the day, and we have no idea if he came down at night. By day 3 or 4, the public was extremely concerned. Public officials and fox news members were reaching out to the park service, demanding this cat be brought down. Thankfully, what I’ll call for all intents and purposes a “professional tree climber”, managed to get the cat down and animal control promptly caught him. The public named him “Ben” after Ben Franklin.

On my last day, alongside prolonged good-byes, I witnessed both a small socialist protest against I.C.E.  at the Bell and a public intoxication incident at Christ Church.  The protest went peacefully, and the intoxication incident came terribly close to including public urination, but the rangers got the situation under control.

By the time Saturday came, I could not have said enough “thank-yous”, and still can’t. I’ve learned so much from all the rangers and staff willing to let me into their world, and I will without a doubt carry it with me into my career. Even though my 10 weeks are up, I found myself wishing I’d be back on Monday.