Grover Beach Moving Forward With Putting Cameras At Local Park

By the end of the year, people who spend a lot of time at Ramona Garden Park in Grover Beach can expect to see surveillance cameras scattered across the popular recreation area.

Grover Beach police say most of the calls they respond to at the park involve public intoxication, drug activity, and public disturbances.

Officials add that most of those problems come from the homeless.

Denny Rickman is homeless and spends a lot of time at Ramona Garden Park. He does not know why the city is choosing to install cameras and says, “We got people sitting here enjoying the park, when we get harassed for just enjoying the park.”

Rickman’s best friend, Jim Roberts, notes that there have “been problems here at the park,” but says, “It’s never been anything like stabbings, rapes, robberies, murders.”

Roberts is also homeless and wants people to know that the park is a safe area for people to go to and surveillance cameras are unnecessary.

Grover Beach police say cameras will allow them to monitor the area from the police department.

Thomas Webb, a bus driver for the San Luis Obispo Regional Transit Authority, believes it is a good idea and says “it’ll make it safer for us, it’ll make it safer for all my customers, it’ll make it safer for everyone that wants to come down and enjoy the park.”

Police say they have not determined where they will place the cameras in the park.

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