Vandals destroy simple everyday pleasures enjoyed by others

Some acts have no apparent purpose other than to spoil something, writes Dan Buckley

IT could have done justice to an episode of the television drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

The place: a children’s playground;

The scene: one of destruction by nameless individuals whose only apparent motive was to derive pleasure from depriving others of pleasure.

The destruction: all-embracing.

The children’s playground adjacent to Beechwood Park in the Cork suburb of Ballinlough became a crime scene yesterday morning, cordoned off with official tape, as gardaí and Cork City Council officials went to survey the damage.

Swings, slides and even the see-saw were all rendered unusable by a gang of youths whose chosen weapons were buckets of paint.

Perhaps too indolent to use the paint to daub graffiti around the playground, they took to destroying children’s playthings just for the sheer hell of it. Not the stuff of major crime, but unacceptable nonetheless.

“There’s a problem here every weekend,” said a distressed parent, who described the anger of locals at the teenage gangs who congregate at the playground to light bonfires, hold drinking parties and cause havoc.

“Last Saturday a group of boys set fire to ski hats that they then put on their head, thinking, I suppose, that this was hilarious. They take over the playground every weekend which means the children cannot use it. I have a neighbour who moves out of town every weekend so her kids can have somewhere safe to play. The playground needs to be fenced off before things get any worse,” said the mother of two toddlers.

This is not the first time in the Cork area that vandals have wrecked children’s playthings. In August of this year, two of the miniature fairy houses erected in a west Cork wood were destroyed. The houses, complete with frosted windows, colourful three inch doors and little stone paths leading up to them, had been delighting visitors to the woods for weeks.

Other recent acts of wanton destruction include taking an axe to a seat at the playground in Douglas Community Park and daubing the area with graffiti. Two years ago, a new playground at Kilemore Road was vandalised even before it opened.

Most crime is rarely wanton or heedless. Even a thief has an understandable motive, that of personal gain. Yet vandals — so named in history by the ancient Romans to describe the ruthless destruction of their city by invading tribes — have no apparent concern other than to spoil anything useful, beautiful or venerable.

Sociologists will tell you that those who vandalise are often driven by anger and a need for destruction. Vandalism of public property can be seen as an act of defiance against society as a whole.

The teen years are, indeed, a time of change and transition, when a young adult begins to seek to define who they are and how they will choose to make their mark upon the world. Unfortunately, some choose to “make their mark” in a destructive manner. Teen vandalism can arise when a frustrated or bored youngster experiments with pushing boundaries. They often view vandalism as victimless and may not question its morality.

Yet even the most wayward teenager should be made realise that destroying the simple pleasures of a child in a playground is anything but cool.

Apprehending vandals is often difficult, and the costs of repairing the damage are passed on to taxpayers, private property owners and insurance companies. Those who are caught and successfully prosecuted should be made pay, certainly, but, more importantly, be instructed to return to the scene of their crime and clean up their act — literally.