Dolores Park hit again by vandals

Zachary Jen (3), of San Francisco, peers across caution tape into the sandbox at Dolores Park in San Francisco on Sunday, March 1, 2015. The sandbox was found full of broken glass bottles on Friday, forcing maintenance staff to close it while they replace the sand. less Zachary Jen (3), of San Francisco, peers across caution tape into the sandbox at Dolores Park in San Francisco on Sunday, March 1, 2015. The sandbox was found full of broken glass bottles on Friday, forcing ... more Photo: Terray Sylvester, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Terray Sylvester, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 39 Caption Close Dolores Park hit again by vandals 1 / 39 Back to Gallery

City crews are cleaning up Dolores Park once again this weekend, this time after a new group of vandals left dozens of broken bottles strewn in the children’s sandbox.

Less than two weeks after two teenagers broke into the fenced-off construction site on the park’s north side and caused $100,000 in damage, a late-night boozing session turned destructive at the children’s playground area on the south side of the park.

Park maintenance staffers showed up to Dolores Park Friday morning to find the sandbox full of glass from what appears to be dozens of broken beer bottles. While shards of glass from one or two bottles can be sifted out with relative ease, the huge amount of glass, much of it shattered against a nearby retaining wall, meant the sand has to be hauled out and replaced.

It will take about a week to get rid of the glass-laced sand and bring in about 20 tons of fresh stuff.

“There were a lot of parents with kids who did not get to use the sandbox today,” said Recreation and Parks Director Phil Ginsburg. “Parks are sacred spaces and as a community we all need to be a little angrier about this.”

In February, a pair of teenagers — one 17 and one 18 — broke into an area on the park’s north side where construction workers are close to completing a $20 million renovation that will include new tennis courts, bathrooms and playing fields. The suspects, who were arrested, hot-wired a construction vehicle, did some doughnuts on the newly sodded turf and popped wheelies on some uncured pavement.

The escapade ripped up sod which had not rooted yet, and damaged some of the newly installed drainage infrastructure. The vandals also tagged a new maintenance shed and then lit a fire to roast marshmallows and make s’mores they had brought with them.

Supervisor Scott Wiener said the series of incidents underscores the need for more park security. Over the past decade the city has gradually cut back on park patrols to the point where in recent years there have been just a pair of officers on duty at any given time. Wiener successfully pushed to get funding for another two positions in the current budget, but says there’s a desperate need for more.

“In the upcoming budget process, it’s a high priority for me to seek a significant expansion of park patrol,” he said. “We have two park patrol officers at any given time watching over 220 parks representing 15 percent of the city’s land mass.”

Vandalism is a major issue at Golden Gate Park and other city parks as well, he said

“People in the community work so hard, and our staff works so hard, to make these parks as good and usable and beautiful as they can be, and you have these sociopaths who just come in and brutalize them,” said Wiener. “That is deeply frustrating.”

And as apartment towers continue to pop up around the city, the wear and tear on city parks is only going to become more of a challenge, Ginsburg said.

Sandbox at Dolores Park in #SanFrancisco will be closed a week following vandalism that left shards of glass in sand pic.twitter.com/Xp7BvIQJiK — KTVU (@KTVU) February 28, 2015

“We have 10,000 people on a nice weekend at Dolores Park,” he said. “There were not 10,000 people in Dolores Park a decade ago. As a community we need to make sure our open space is well maintained.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer. E-mail: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen



