Note: If you see any of this activity going on, please call the Police non-emergency number at (301) 279-8000.
On Wednesday, I posted about more violent crime in Olde Towne. In that post, I mentioned the problems with men hanging out and drinking along a path near the school. The path I was talking about is at the top center of this image:
Following are a number of pictures taken along that path and the opposite side of the field, near Diamond Ave, taken by a Gaithersblog reader. The First few were taken in early October of 2006, at the rear of an abandoned property on Diamond Ave., near the footpath which runs along the south side of that field:
When Gaithersburg officials were notified about the problem, a crew came out within a couple of days to clean it up. Later that month, the reader noticed even more trash accumulation — consisting almost exclusively of alcohol containers — along the path at the north side of the field:
Again the City was notified. This time it was a bit more complicated because this trash was on MCPS property. My understanding is that even though it was School’s responsibility to clean it up, in the end the City wound up doing the bulk of the work, even installing some trash cans along the walk. The same Gaithersblog reader returned late last week, and found that, while much of what was there had in fact been cleaned up, as far as the activities going on in that area, things don’t seem to have changed much:
There’s broken glass (and limes) strewn all over the place. The glass appears to be mostly from Corona bottles that have been deliberately smashed on the ground.
The trash cans were about half full. Keep in mind, this is MCPS property and there are severe penalties for having alcohol on school grounds. During the reader’s visit last week, he ran into some Gaithersburg city employees who were taking a look to see what needed to be done; they said that they’d be back on Friday to clean things up yet again. The reader unfortunately got there too late to snap pictures of the crew working, but did manage to get a shot of them leaving after finishing the job:
I think that this gives a pretty good idea of what is going in that area. There seems to be routine partying along that path, and occasionally some homeless people sleeping in the woods near the schools. While MCPS is doing next to nothing to deal with the problem, the City is at least making an effort to keep the area from deteriorating into a complete dump. It is unclear why nothing appears to have been done about the routine consumption of alcohol on school property.
Again, if you see any of this activity going on, please call the Police non-emergency number at (301) 279-8000.