Armed guards have changed the neighborhood park

I unsnapped the dog’s leash, letting him loose in the dog run at the park near my house.

I’ve been coming here for 20 years. I spent long afternoons pushing my toddler son on the swings until he was big enough to do it himself.

Sawyer learned to swim here, working his way up from tadpole to shark. The pool has since been replaced with a community garden where neighbors rent space in raised beds.

Sawyer played Little League on a nearby field, wielding his bat as if it were a lightsaber.

On the sidewalk near the playground, a child had drawn a yellow sun in chalk.

I can’t imagine anyone needing a gun here. Yet private armed security guards now patrol this park, a decision by the city council in October that has divided Tempe residents.

Opponents say there’s no need for guns, that the most prevalent problems at parks like noise and vagrancy don’t require lethal force. Proponents say it creates a deterrent and makes parks safer.

At a ramada, a group of men, their belongings piled in shopping carts, talked loudly, swearing mostly, as they took apart bikes.

Vendors were setting up for a farmer’s market at 5 p.m. A food truck pulled up.

Ken Perron manages the garden. A woman was assaulted in the dog run, he told me. Dealers pull up on the other side to sell drugs. The garden has been broken into.

He sees the armed guards in pairs every few hours.

“They’re just there to be the eyes and the ears,” Ken said. For anything serious, they call police.

For me, this park is where we came to play.

It doesn’t look like anything has changed. People come and go from the small building where martial arts and yoga classes are held. Kids carrying backpacks cut across the field. There’s the thump-thump of basketballs.

But everything is different.