Seattle parks riddled with crime, prostitution and drugs have installed ping-pong tables in an effort to turn the undesirable recreation areas into family-friendly zones.
“It changes the perception that parks can be dark and unsafe,” said Adrienne Caver-Hall of the Seattle Parks Department to CBS Seattle. Caver-Hall is leading the effort to push out the unwanted activity and make the city’s parks a more welcoming and safe place.
Community leaders and the city of Seattle teamed up together to raise over one thousand dollars for the tables, balls, and paddles to be placed in various parks all over the city, and it seems to be working. Though the friendly games presence in the parks can’t be directly correlated to the decrease in crime, the energy and crowd is has brought to the parks seems to have deterred the crime from continuing.
“If there’s a lot of positive activity, some of the negative stuff doesn’t want to be here,” said the city’s Chinatown International District director Maiko Winkler-Chin.
As creative and unconventional as the effort may appear, it seems that the presence of ping-pong tables is working at hitting the crime out of the parks.
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