While no crime has been reported within Propst Park in the recent past, some are careful not to linger after games are over.
In an interview with The Dispatch last week, Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders expressed concern about recent crimes near park facilities.
The county plans to commission a study, examining all aspects of the Columbus Lowndes Recreation Authority, at its next meeting on Friday.
There have not been any incidents of crime at Propst Park over the last couple of years, which is one of CLRA’s largest parks, according to Greg Lewis, executive director of CLRA. That includes violent crime and car break-ins, he said.
Propst doesn’t have any issues that aren’t typical of any park where children’s sporting events occur, he added.
Lewis credits smaller crowds and earlier game times as contributors to the relative safety of the park. He says most families with small children have left the park by 7:30 p.m.
Other perspectives
James A. Richardson is a reverend and part-time police officer who Tuesday night was at the park driving around on a golf cart, giving people rides and chatting with parents. He’s been at the park for about two years, and before that he was an umpire at games for around 30 years, he said. There haven’t been any more serious problems than parents getting into arguments with umpires, he said.
He does remember bigger crowds in the past. Hundreds of people would come to the games.
“Baseball was pretty much all they had back then,” he said, noting that many kids today are migrating toward soccer.
The only crime-related incidents he knows about were one car break-in across the street last year and the Sandfield One Stop shooting last week.
Small crowds of families gathered at Propst Park Tuesday to watch their children play T-ball or coach-pitch boys baseball. None were too worried to bring their children to the park for games, although one or two said they leave immediately after games are over because of worry over crime in nearby neighborhoods.
None who talked to The Dispatch said they’d had so much as a car broken into.
“I haven’t been (worried to bring my child to the park) yet but when I read about something, I do get alarmed,” said Columbus resident Gayla Rye, who has a child who plays T-ball at Propst.
Still, Rye said she’s not worried about anything happening in the park and that she’s never had any crime-related problem there before.
Columbus resident Misty Holder, who was at the park for a T-ball game, said she’s reasonably cautious – she doesn’t leave her purse in plain view in her car – but that she hasn’t had a problem in the park, either.
Bernard Cunningham coaches boys coach-pitch baseball and has seven children, the oldest 19, all of whom have played sports at Propst Park. He also played ball there as a child. He’s never had any problems.
“If there was anything going on, I’d know about it,” Cunningham said.
Another coach, who didn’t want to give his name, disagreed.
“There’s a crime problem or we’d be playing after 7 (p.m.),” he said.
Over the last couple of years, numbers of games and children have dwindled. The CLRA began holding only one game of children’s T-ball and baseball per night this year, according to sports coordinator Billy Craig. But that’s not because anyone was worried about crime, he said. It’s because parents complained that during the school year that after late games, their children didn’t have time to do homework and eat dinner before bed.
“Now they can go home, do their homework, eat, get to bed early,” Craig said.
But not every parent is convinced of the park’s safety.
“We’re out of here the minute the game’s over,” said one Crawford parent who didn’t want to give her name to The Dispatch. “We don’t stay.”
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