Hope SPRINGS Eternal

A great day to lounge in the park!

(This article was written on Wednesday)

Yesterday in the late afternoon on a spring-like day, one HPD police officer responded to my call about a person passed out on a bench in the 7th Street Park.  10 minutes later at the police station, after the officer had interacted with Michael Madison and left the park, she told me that she didn't ticket Michael Madison for drinking alcohol in the 7th Street Park because the vodka bottle on the ground next to the bench he was passed out on was empty, so she could not determine if it was his or if he had been drinking from it.  I guess the same was true for the two empty beer cans underneath his bench.

The officer also told me that it was her "discretion" to not ticket Madison for having a glass bottle in the park, one of the park's well posted rules.  NO GLASS OBJECTS OF ANY KIND ALLOWED IN THE PARK, the signs read.

What did the officer ticket Michael Madison for yesterday?  Nothing.  She asked him to "get up," watched him move to another bench, then got back into her patrol vehicle and immediately returned to the police station where she had come from 7 or 8 minutes earlier. 

"What about all the junk Madison left behind?" I asked the officer.

"Am I his garbage picker?" the Hudson police officer responded impatiently, almost angrily. "He can pick it up, he's a big boy."

"You couldn't have told him to take his garbage with him?" I asked the officer.   

"Bill, why don't you go pick up the garbage if it concerns you that much?  How's that?" the Hudson police officer responded as I exited the Hudson police station, disgusted but unsurprised.  

This morning, over 16 hours after that officer woke Michael Madison from his stupor, everything but his tan jacket remained on and around his bench in the 7th Street Park, including the empty glass bottle of the most common brand of vodka he consumes in the park.

Apparently, park "patrons" can continually break the law and the 7th Street Park's posted rules - even for years -- and never be barred from the park.  And, in some instances, not even be ticketed, arrested or warned by HPD for violating the park's posted rules and the city code.  Calls received by HPD about unwelcome and illegal activity in the 7th Street Park appear to me to be regarded by our police force as nothing more than an annoyance, and cops regularly patrolling the park on foot is not even a consideration for our police chief.   Two-minute foot patrols in the park twice a day to interact with the public and the regulars in the park?  "No thank you," says our police chief!

My sense is that the Hudson City Court (and possibly the County DA's Office and the County Jail) has made it explicitly clear to Police Chief Mishanda Franklin that, unless he kills someone, they never want to see Michael Madison in court again.  They have had it with him, as has the Hudson Police Department, obviously.  Of course, park patrons and those of us walking through or past the park can't easily ignore Madison, his "friends" or their detritus.  What a great deal!

2 days later, the glass bottle remains