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Carlton: In a city of gun violence, public pools cool things down

 
Published July 1, 2015

On this sweltering afternoon, the bright sounds rising from the sprawling city park seem out of synch with the neighborhood around it, a tired urban landscape of tattered duplexes and sagging chain-link fences. It's the sound of kids, dozens and dozens of them, laughing, squealing, calling to each other in the universal language of having fun.

This is Tampa's Copeland Park, just across the railroad tracks from busy Fowler Avenue or, more specifically, the cool chlorine-scented waters of the park's public pool. On a day when the feels-like temperature has hit triple digits, kids out of school for the summer have come to this pool in droves, spreading their bright towels on the concrete, toeing off shoes and taking to the blue waters with abandon. They swim and splash and show off on the diving boards, lifeguards watching over them.

This, and parks and pools like it, could be one of the city's best hopes against the ominous long, hot summer now upon us.

We are at a moment in time that has public officials worried, and with reason. Tampa has already seen 21 people murdered this year and an alarming spike in gun violence, much of it in the city's poorer neighborhoods, sometimes over turf disputes. Some of the victims weren't out of high school.

So here's an idea: Give kids a place to go besides nowhere good.

By Monday, Tampa will have nine public parks open until midnight every day through the end of summer — three of them with pools open until midnight, too. Kids can use the parks' gyms and the computer and art rooms, and they are planning movies and music.

Does it help? Since the roll-out of the late hours, the city reports, 1,029 kids have participated. And last weekend alone, with four parks open late so far, 321 kids came for the extended hours.

The city provides pizza, but civic-minded businesses could surely pitch in with food or other donations. The city could use parents and others to volunteer to be game leaders and such. "You don't necessarily have to have a skill," says city spokeswoman Ali Glisson. "You just have to care."

As long as we're talking ideas for a long, hot summer, Tampa just had a gun buyback, $50 per usable gun and no questions asked, taking in 521. (Paid for not by you the taxpayer but by the Tampa Bay Lightning, speaking of civic-mindedness.)

It's perplexing when people say buybacks don't work, that these guns tend to be older and not the ones on the street. And? Say just 10 of those 500-plus guns would have eventually been involved in some crime or violence, and that's a low estimate. That's enough to make it not a solution but a good idea. If one kid doesn't find an old gun hidden away at home and take it to school or point it at his friend or little brother, it's a good idea.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of public pools in the South in the summertime with school out. Tampa has 11 pools, plus three that are closed. Like parks and libraries, we need every one. Pools can be costly to maintain, but what they bring to neighborhoods where kids have few options can't be measured. The kids cooling off in the pool at Copeland Park might tell you that if they weren't busy being kids.