The Farmer's Market in Pioneer Park has become a Salt Lake City destination on Saturday mornings.

The downtown Salt Lake City Farmers Market is a huge success. Every year the market grows larger and is filled with more customers who enjoy the opportunity to buy their fruits and vegetables directly from growers. The market now offers more than just food. Potters, jewelry makers and photographers have stands that have realized success. However, there is still an element to the park that it seems nobody is willing or able to do anything about: drugs.

	click to watch a montage of the farmers market shot September 1st, 2007	A new addition to the farmers market are musicians. The man playing the steel drum in our introduction was a treat for all who listened.

The drug trade and the homeless folks who frequently sleep in the park has become a hot-button issue in the upcoming Salt Lake City Mayoral election. All candidates have said that they will do "clean up the park and improve the park." so area residents wont have any fear in walking through the park when the farmers market isn't happening. However, this has been a goal set by all previous Mayors for the past 20 years and achieving this goal has eluded all of them.

The drug market like the fruit and vegetable market in the park is conducted in the open. Drug dealers blatantly disregard the law and regularly sell drugs such as crystal methamphetemines, marijuana and crack cocaine.

In my first investigation I was offered to buy drugs on several occasions when initially approaching groups of men. They must have assumed a white man in his thirties would have no other reason to approach them then to buy a fix. One man offered me what appeared to be stolen merchandise. It was a new electric razor.
"20 bucks and this is yours," he said.
"No thanks." "
"OK 10 bucks and its yours."
"You would sell me that very nice razor for just 10 bucks. Why don't you just return it to the store you bought it at?"
"Get out of here man, if you aint gonna buy anything then I don't want to talk to you," he said while waving me off.

When I indicated I wanted to conduct interviews and videotape them, I had the same reaction several times. Folks split up and scattered.
"He's five ohh, he's got five ohh written all over his face." One man said as he was walking away. I tried to explain that I just wanted to hear there side of the Pioneer Park story, yet they were all completely unwilling to be interviewed. My last attempt a guy said, "if you go get me a cheeseburger then I'll agree to an interview."

I came back to the park a half hour later with ten Wendy's cheeseburgers and ten one-dollar-bills. My plan was to bribe these poor folks into interviews. By the end I had six interviews, eight cheeseburgers and no cash. It was a interesting study.

Money, I learned, even a small amount, is more persuasive than anything, even the risk of arrest in that I might be an under-cover cop.

Here are the interviews from our previous Pioneer Park story. The problem with my previous story is that it only identifies the problems with the park and the bad without recognizing the good too. The Farmer's Market has made both the park and the neighborhood come alive in recent years and long-time Farmer's Market merchants have watched the change in the neighborhood over the years.

	click to watch interviews with both the "lilly lady" and Jeremy Hunting	Julia has earned the reputation to be called, "the lilly lady". She has been selling lilly bulbs in Pioneer Park for 15 years. She says when she first started at the market they had strict rules for how they had to set up their stands. "We used to have to police the area and pick up all of the needles out of the grass.

"After I'm done taking everything down, you can see people pulling up and exchanging money." Hunting said that once when he was resting he witnessed six drug deals in an hour. When I questioned Hunting about the efforts the police are making. He said that he didn't see the police presence in the park. "But they must know about it because its everywhere."

In the course of the investigation I witnessed several raids and busts by the police. On one occasion the police drove three vehicles into the park to raid five dealers at once. Each dealer was individually searched, hand-cuffed and taken away. Our next segment will focus on law enforcement efforts in cleaning up the park. What do the newly added, police on bicycles think about the problem? Why does it appear to many residents that the drug trade in the park is largely ignored?

<<previous Pioneer Park Story

Pioneer Park: A success and a disaster

posted September 7th, 2007