Park Hours

According to the City's website, the hours for the Ryder Woods Park are dawn to dusk.

OK, that's pretty easy to enforce. All the officer needs to know is "what time" does dusk occur each day and "what time" is dawn. There is probably some official guide that states these specific times, regardless of whether it's cloudy, raining, foggy, etc.

One source of Dusk and Dawn times is http://www.weather.com/. After you retrieve your local weather, scroll down to the forecast for the evening and the next day, and you'll find the Dusk and Dawn times there.

If you spot potential miscreants entering or in Ryder Woods in the middle of the night or see strange cars parked on Fremont or Dick Tracy Way in the middle of the night, then notify the Woodstock Police Department. Tell the telecommunicator (you know, the dispatcher) what you've seen and tell them you want those in the Park to be ticketed.

The telecommunicator will ask if you want an officer to come to your house. Not likely! For crying out loud, you don't want a spotlight on who is reporting this to the police. If you want the officer to telephone you, say so.

If the officer finds people in the Woods between dusk and dawn, then he can cite them on his own authority. He does not need you to sign a complaint. If he says he does, then let me know.

The police can clean up Ryder Woods on their own. The canine officer and Brinx could certainly walk through Ryder Woods. The bicycle officers could ride through the Woods at night. An officer on foot could walk through the Woods.

But here's what you'll likely hear from the dispatcher. "The officer will decide whether tickets should be issued." How many times have I heard that one, when I have reported violations in Woodstock?

Tell the dispatcher that you want the officer informed that you are requesting that he issue tickets. Ask the dispatcher if he will tell the officer that. It will be easy to check. You can email the beat officer and ask if he was notified that you requested tickets issued to any persons found in Ryder Woods between dusk and dawn.

Now there is this thing called "Discretion." An officer has discretion to issue a warning, instead of a ticket. However, if there is a resident complaint and Ryder Woods has a reputation for late-night drug deals and who knows what else, then the way it gets stopped is for the cops to write tickets.

So what did they do last Thursday morning. Issue a "warning" to the alleged perp from the backyard. Sure scared him, right? He was so scared that he waited until 2:30AM Friday to allegedly sexually assault a woman in a laundromat. Gotta remember to say "allegedly". And how he is innocent until found guilty which, of course, he is.