Andrew Casler

acasler@ithacajournal.com | @AndrewCasler

"Do not jump!" Ithaca Gorge Ranger Brittany Lagaly shouted as several people prepared to dive in and swim at Second Dam.

About 20 people, who had walked past posted signs that forbid swimming in the area, gathered to swim and dive from cliffs at the illegal swimming hole on this sunny day in mid-June.

Despite Lagaly's warning, two swimmers waded into the water and swam.

The rangers cannot ticket or arrest, and they face difficult decisions daily regarding illegal activities in the gorges: Should they call on limited police resources, or can they keep people safe with information about why swimming there is illegal and making threats about calling the police?

"Honestly, they could call law enforcement probably a dozen times a day for everything that they see out there, but they know that those resources simply aren't available," Ithaca City Clerk Julie Holcomb said. She is the city's liaison to gorge safety programs.

The gorge rangers, who are newly equipped with body cameras to record interactions, patrol the area daily.

They serve as land stewards — helping with hikers' questions and minor first aid — but the bulk of their workload is intervening when people illegally swim, dive, drink alcohol and use illegal substances in the Six Mile Creek area. The four rangers also report cleaning out loads of garbage left from partiers and swimmers.

Sometimes, the people who rangers try to stop are combative or intoxicated. The rangers' limited authority is coupled with difficulties in coordinating with police.

Lagaly and her patrolling partner, Angela Sims, watched as two men dried off and then packed up their beer cans.

One man told The Ithaca Journal he was “too tipsy to interview,” and his friend’s slurred speech showed he also had been drinking. Hours ago, rangers told the men the area isn’t sanctioned for swimming and alcohol wasn’t allowed either.

The men didn’t seem to get the message, however. One man pushed his friend into the water as the rangers watched.

But after seeing the rangers a second time, the intoxicated swimmers walked out. They said they were driving back to the Binghamton area with a third man who appeared to be sober.

On the opposite shore, two women who looked high-school aged glanced toward the rangers, waded into the water and then swam. The rangers looked on.

About a dozen people, who also appeared to be high school students, listened to Lagaly's order and sat atop a 10-foot cliff. They held towels and wore swimsuits.

The group watched the swimmers and the rangers in a standoff separated by Six Mile Creek.

“I just trying to swim; it’s mad hot!” a man yelled across the gorge.

Someone threw rocks into the water in the rangers’ direction.

Dangerous area

Waters near the Mulholland Wildflower Preserve are the epicenter for illegal swimming in Six Mile Creek.

The main swimming areas — First Dam, Second Dam and Potter’s Falls — are secluded, and they’re within walking distance from the city and two schools — Ithaca College and Cornell University.

The most popular spot, and arguably the most dangerous, is Second Dam. The most popular cliff jumps there are about 10 to 50 feet above the water.

People who choose the highest jump start from the cliff top and leap to the dam's downstream side — logging about 80 feet of air time. Jumpers report that their feet hit the bottom of Six Mile Creek after crashing into the shallow water.

Last July, Eric Richardson, 20, of Virgil, drowned at Second Dam. He jumped into water south of the dam but didn’t resurface.

Because swimming is illegal in Six Mile Creek, there was no lifeguard to rescue Richardson from the murky water. Bystanders attempted several times to find him underwater before bringing him to the surface.

On Tuesday at First Dam, a girl broke her ankle while jumping into a pool, according to the Ithaca Fire Department. Firefighters set up a rope system, and hauled her out of the gorge and into a waiting ambulance.

"It's a beautiful place to be, but if you're not being safe, and drinking on top of it, things can happen," ranger Kyle Laribee said.

Police response

Gorge rangers act as the eyes and ears for law enforcement, according to Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Daniel Donahue and Ithaca Police Officer Jamie Williamson.

Ithaca police have jurisdiction over First Dam. The sheriff's office is responsible for Second Dam and Potter’s Falls.

On Monday, the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office arrested three people who allegedly refused rangers’ orders to stop cliff jumping and swimming at Second Dam. The people taunted and swore at the gorge rangers, according to the sheriff’s office.

There’s no protocol for rangers to follow for getting people to stop swimming, cliff jumping or drinking, Holcomb said.

The rangers received security guard training, Holcomb added. Donahue and Williamson oriented rangers with the gorges, taught them to use body cameras, and instructed them how they should approach people. The officers also trained rangers to use their judgment for evaluating whether a situation is unsafe.

“We’re supposed to ask them nicely to comply, and then if we feel like there’s a safety issue, then we call the sheriffs (office), and then the sheriffs (deputies) come in and clear the place out, but we’re not really supposed clear places or kick people out,” Lagaly said.

“We’re like the friendly reminder-slash-warning,” ranger Sims added.

There’s no minimum number of swimmers that warrant a police response, Williamson said.

“If one person is acting crazy, they’re jumping off the cliffs (swimming, drinking alcohol and breaking other laws), rangers are encouraged to address that behavior,” Williamson said.

If the rangers don’t feel they can safely stop that behavior, they are encouraged to call police, he added.

The sheriff’s office typically sees 50 to 200 swimmers at Second Dam when responding there.

“Obviously, we can’t ticket everyone for swimming, and it really isn’t fair to ticket two and let 50 go,” Donahue said.

People are ticketed when they don’t comply with requests to stop swimming or cliff diving, Donahue added. “We will arrest those people,” he said.

Coordinating response

When people refuse to listen, or become combative, rangers can face a long wait for authorities to arrive.

Ranger Laribee called police for about 50 swimmers and cliff jumpers. He waited an hour-and-a-half for a sheriff’s office response, he added.

“It’s kind of hard, because you’ve got kids out there (swimming and cliff jumping), and you’re just kind of sitting there,” he said. “When you get a crowd of people like that, and there are four of us, you don’t want to do anything to antagonize that crowd.”

The sheriff’s office and Ithaca police balance patrolling the Six Mile Creek area with several other priorities, according to Donahue and Williamson.

“We have to prioritize some of the things that we can and cannot do,” Williamson said. Police juggle patrols throughout the city and respond to “what’s important now,” he added.

Calls for police increase during the summer; sometimes response to calls to the gorges is slow because the sheriff’s deputies are busy on other calls, Donahue added.

“It’s that time of the year. It’s just busy, and that’s not an excuse, it’s just a reality,” Donahue said. “When they call, we get down there as fast as we possibly can.”

Once police do respond, and if they write tickets or make arrests, there’s an added consideration that a judge may throw out the case, according to Holcomb, the city clerk.

Holcomb added that she’s heard some officers don’t like writing tickets for Six Mile Creek violations because the tickets tend to get thrown out in court.

“I think sometimes judges and district attorneys may not be fully informed of some the situations that happen down in the gorge,” Holcomb said.

Upholding tickets in court would show that the city is serious about safety, she added.

“It’s unfortunate, but sometimes (tickets and arrests) are the only way people learn that this is not an unsupervised area where you can do whatever you want — it’s a natural area that we’re looking to preserve and protect and keep people safe in,” Holcomb said.

Donahue and Williamson said officers should consider whether tickets will be upheld when enforcing the law.

“If we wrote several tickets and several got dismissed, we would still write the tickets — that’s not our worry, our worry is to enforce the law as we see it, and whatever happens after that has nothing to do with us,” Donahue said.

Could Ithaca allow swimming?

As officials voted on gorge ranger funding this spring, some people called on the city to legalize swimming in the area.

An activist group that identified as the Free The Gorges campaign called for alternatives to stepped-up enforcement on Six Mile Creek when the Town of Ithaca approved spending $7,500 on the rangers.

Before Tompkins County approved its $7,500 to fund the gorge rangers, Legislator Mike Sigler, R-Lansing, also called for legalized swimming in the area.

The expanded patrols would mean penalties for "victimless crimes," that body cameras are "Big-Brotherism," and swimming in Six Mile Creek has been commonplace for decades, Sigler argued.

"It seems that no matter what you do up there, people are going to want to swim in the gorges because that's a part of the Ithaca experience ... that's what people do in Ithaca," he said.

Sigler suggested that officials hire lifeguards and charge a $10 fee to swim in Six Mile Creek, instead of hiring rangers.

Tompkins County Health Department sanitarians Skip Parr and Anne Wildman said state law requires several expensive improvements before the city could allow swimming in Six Mile Creek.

Officials would have to station a lifeguard along every 50 feet of shoreline, build a restroom and changing room, test water for pollutants and clarity from the surface to a 6-foot depth, and ensure the creek’s bottom is gravel or stone. Also, no diving could occur from a height greater than 10 feet.

Without those changes and with continued demand for swimming in Six Mile Creek, rangers will continue to face a difficult task.

“We do what we can, and obviously, we know that we can’t stop everybody,” Donahue said. “We’re trying to educate when we can and enforce when we have to.”

Follow Andrew Casler on Twitter @AndrewCasler.

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