{"id":31798,"date":"2016-05-27T08:02:28","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T15:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/anchorage-to-take-steps-to-cut-crime-at-park\/"},"modified":"2016-05-27T08:02:28","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T15:02:28","slug":"anchorage-to-take-steps-to-cut-crime-at-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/anchorage-to-take-steps-to-cut-crime-at-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Anchorage to take steps to cut crime at park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANCHORAGE<\/strong> \u2014 Anchorage officials are looking to reduce crime at a city park that has been at the center of several public safety complaints, with plans to tear down a large, decades-old fountain as part of the effort.<\/p>\n<p>Mayor Ethan Berkowitz announced the removal of the fountain Wednesday at a press conference, along with other measures aimed at improving public safety, including increasing police patrols near Town Square Park, KTUU-TV reported.<\/p>\n<p>Berkowitz said the fountain installed in the 1980s has become \u201chas become a barrier and a hiding spot\u201d for people who engage in illegal activity. It also hasn\u2019t \u201cworked for some time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The city\u2019s goal is to make families feel safe and attract more people to the area.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis will be a joint effort with the community,\u201d said Anchorage police Capt. Kenneth McCoy, who was also at the conference.<\/p>\n<p>Berkowitz said there are plans for the Anchorage Downtown Partnership to increase the number of public events at the park and partner with the Anchorage Community Development Authority to offer free parking nearby during certain times of the day.<\/p>\n<p>The steps announced Wednesday to reduce crime in the area are just the start of the process in making Town Square more family friendly, Berkowitz said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll take this one step at a time,\u201d he said. \u201cDoing nothing is not an option.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE \u2014 Anchorage officials are looking to reduce crime at a city park that has been at the center of several public safety complaints, with plans to tear down a large, decades-old fountain as part of the effort. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz announced the removal of the fountain Wednesday at a press conference, along with other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-31798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31798"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=31798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}