Park honoring fallen APD officer Phil Chacon reopens after two years of renovations
As they enjoyed the sunny, spring weather, city of Albuquerque Parks and Recreation Director Dave Simon welcomed them back. The International District park along Louisiana SE, north of Gibson, had been closed since 2023 because of renovations.
"I'm so happy," resident Katie Hall said. "I've been waiting two years for it to open up."
The park is named after Albuquerque Police Department officer Phil Chacon, who was fatally shot while responding to an armed robbery in 1980.
Chacon's daughter, Denise Chacon, was 10 years old at the time. "My dad was all about community," she told the Journal, "and for a park to be named after him is the greatest tribute that could be made in his honor."
The renovations, she added, meant everything to her and her family.
The $9.7 million worth of work included a renovated turf field for futsal — a variation of soccer played with a heavier ball — a new disc golf course, a walking path, a community garden, a dog park and an expanded playground. An art walk will be added that will include pieces "designed for children and youth that reflect the diverse cultural heritage of the International District," Simon said.
"(The park) is an open space where we can gather our families, enjoy the fresh grass and take our pets," Hall said. "I think this really is good for the community's morale because we've had so many hard times here lately."
Another park feature is a BMX pump track, which is designed to be ridden by pumping, not pedaling or pushing, using a series of rollers, berms and banked turns to generate speed and momentum.
Instead of having to drive to Bernalillo to practice on a pump track with his 13-year-old son, Craig Berry said he can now stay in the city.
Funding for the park's renovations came from a variety of sources, including the American Rescue Plan Act, Community Development Block Grant program, impact fees, state capital outlay funds, the city's general fund and the New Mexico Finance Authority, whose contribution is going toward a new irrigation system.
Phil Chacon Park "just needed some love and needed some rejuvenation" that will ensure it is going to benefit a couple of generations of Burqueños, Simon said.
The improvements are really exciting, especially for youth who now have a place to go, resident Genevieve San Miguel said. Hopefully, it will keep them off the streets, she said.
As visitors strolled the park and listened to a performance from New Mexico Taiko, a guest used colored chalk to draw a message on the sidewalk that read: "Thank you."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
a day ago
- New York Post
Rehab can keep you out of jail — but become a prison itself
Chris Koon didn't read the fine print. Sitting in the Cenikor Baton Rouge rehab center's intake office in 2015, flanked by his mom and grandmother, he signed where told. 'A lot of it read like legalese,' writes Shoshana Walter in 'Rehab: An American Scandal' (Simon & Schuster, Aug. 12). 'Incomprehensible but also innocuous, like something you might see before downloading an app on your phone.' Koon felt lucky. He wasn't going to prison. Just days earlier, he'd been arrested for meth possession. The alternative to five years in state prison? A brutal two-year Cenikor inpatient program. Koon took the deal. In signing the intake documents, he agreed to 'receive no monetary compensation' for work he did, with wages going 'directly back to the Foundation.' He signed away his right to workers' compensation if injured. He forfeited his food stamps, disability payments and any other government assistance. And he agreed to 'adopt appropriate morals and values as promoted by the program.' Koon's story isn't an outlier — it's a glimpse into what Walter calls 'America's other drug crisis.' While overdoses and opioid deaths dominate headlines, far less attention goes to the 'profit-hungry, under-regulated, and all too often deadly rehab industry,' writes Walter. Across the country, thousands of treatment programs are propped up by federal policies and rooted in a distinctly American blend of punishment and personal responsibility. People were 'lured to rehab with the promise of a cure for what ailed them,' Walter writes, 'only to repeatedly falter and fail inside a system that treated them like dollar signs.' The idea hard labor can cure someone isn't new. After the Civil War, US slavery was abolished except as punishment for a crime. That loophole became the foundation for a forced-labor system that conveyed newly freed black people into prisons and chain gangs. Over time, prison officials began marketing this arrangement as 'rehabilitation.' As Walter writes, this legacy has been repackaged for the modern drug crisis. The Affordable Care Act promised expanded treatment access through Medicaid. But the rehab industry that exploded in response was lightly regulated, profit-driven and increasingly dangerous. The result: thousands of people like Chris Koon, lured into treatment by courts, cops or family members, only to find themselves stuck in a system that looked less like therapy and more like punishment. They include women like April Lee, a black woman from Philadelphia. Despite growing up in addiction's long shadow — her mother died from AIDS when Lee was just a teenager, after years of selling sex to support a crack habit — Lee didn't start using drugs herself until after having her second child, when a doctor prescribed her Percocet for back pain. That opened the door to addiction. Child-welfare authorities eventually took her kids. Fellow users nicknamed her 'Mom' and 'Doc' for her uncanny ability to find usable veins, no matter how damaged. April Lee returned to her recovery house — as an unpaid house monitor. April Lee / ACLU She entered recovery in 2016. Every morning at 6, 18 women gathered in the dining room of one of two overcrowded houses to read from the Bible. Lee stayed 10 months. With nowhere else to go, she returned — this time as a house monitor, working without pay in exchange for a bed. 'She was still early into recovery, and she felt stressed by the intensity of the job,' Walter writes. 'On top of that, she wasn't getting a paycheck, so she couldn't save up money to leave.' 'Don't really know how to feel right now,' Lee wrote in her journal. 'The lady I work for — for free, mind you — wont me to watch over women witch mean I have to stay in every night.' She felt physically and emotionally trapped. 'I wanted to snap this morning. Miss my children so much.' Like so many others, Lee found herself stuck in the recovery-house loop — forced to work, unable to leave and earning nothing. She helped with chores, mainly cooking and cleaning. Residents' food stamps stocked the kitchen. Lee loved to cook, and she made comfort food for the house: mac and cheese, fried chicken, beef stew. But all the warmth she gave others couldn't buy her a way out. For others, like Koon, it was about more than just forced labor. During his first 30 days at Cenikor, the other patients policed each other. If one person broke a rule, the entire group might be punished with a 'fire drill' in the middle of the night. 'If anyone stepped out of line or did something wrong during the drill, they'd have to stay awake even longer,' Walter writes. Discipline was obsessive. In his first month, Koon sat in a classroom with about 30 other residents, most sent by courts like he was, reciting rules out loud, line by line. There were more than 100. 'He could get in trouble for not having a pen, not wearing a belt, for an untied shoelace, for leaving a book on the table, for his shirt coming untucked,' Walter details. Koon learned the punishment system fast. A common one was 'the verbal chair,' in which any participant could order him to sit, arms locked and knees at a 90-degree angle, and stare silently at the wall while others screamed at him. 'Go have a seat in the verbal chair. Think about having your shirt untucked,' they'd say. And Koon, like everyone else, was expected to respond, 'Thank you.' There were others. 'Mirror therapy,' where he'd stand and yell his failings at himself in the mirror. 'The dishpan,' where he'd be dressed in a neon-green shirt, scrubbing floors and dishes while loudly reciting the Cenikor philosophy, 'a paragraph-long diatribe about self-change,' Walter writes. And the dreaded 'verbal haircut,' when another resident, sometimes even a staff member, would berate him as part of his treatment. Dressed up as a therapeutic community, Koon thought instead, 'This is like a cult.' Walter believes he wasn't far off. Everyone was required to tattle. Koon had to turn in weekly at least 10 'pull-ups' — written reports detailing rule infractions committed by fellow residents. If he didn't, he could lose points and with them privileges like phone calls, family visits or permission to grow a mustache. Confrontations were public and ritualized: Residents would sit in a circle around one or two people forced to listen as everyone else denounced them. 'They took turns confronting that person, professing their faults and errors, while the person was permitted only to say 'thank you,'' Walter writes. Staff called it 'The Game.' He saw grown men cry. He heard women called bitches and sluts. He realized many employees were former participants enforcing the system that once broke them. Not everyone saw a problem. Many in the legal system embraced tough-love rehab programs, especially judges looking for alternatives to jail. One of Cenikor's biggest champions was Judge Larry Gist, who ran one of the first drug courts, in Jefferson County, Texas, in the 1990s. 'The vast majority of folks that I deal with are basically bottom-feeders,' Gist told the author. 'They've been losers since the day they were born.' Cenikor's extreme model was ideal for 'the right people,' he believed. Cenikor rewarded such loyalty, giving judges and lawmakers steak dinners served by participants and annual awards banquets, complete with gleaming, diamond-shaped trophies. Gist 'proudly displayed his' in 'his chambers, where he liked to host his happy hours with prosecutors and defense attorneys.' Koon was booted out of Cenikor after just two years, for faking a urine sample and contracting a contagious staph infection, but managed to stay sober on his own. He proposed to his childhood sweetheart, Paige, moving in with her two daughters, and finding the stability he'd been chasing for years. He went back to school to learn welding, and the daily rhythms of family life kept him grounded. 'He hasn't taken a drug recreationally for eight years,' Walter writes. Lee's path out took longer, and her recovery was, as Walter writes, 'in some ways a stroke of luck.' She left the house after landing a job at a law firm that helped women reunite with their children in foster care — a world away from the nights she'd once spent tricking at the Blue Moon Hotel but one that barely covered her bills and pushed her just over the poverty line, cutting off assistance. She earned her GED, took online college courses, regained custody of her kids and bought her own home by 2021. 'And yet many days she felt she was teetering on the edge, one crisis or unpaid bill away from making a terrible mistake,' Walter writes. That year, she returned to Kensington, where her addiction had once thrived, bringing fresh food and water to people still living on the streets. As for Cenikor, its time in the shadows ended, at least temporarily. Investigators found evidence of exploitation: residents forced to work without pay, unsafe housing conditions, staff-client relationships, even overdoses inside the facilities. The state of Texas fined Cenikor more than $1.4 million in 2019, but the agency struck a settlement, and it continued to operate. Koon and Lee don't represent everyone who's experienced addiction, treatment or recovery. But they do reflect a system that often promises far more than it delivers. 'When rehab works, it can save lives,' Walter writes. 'It can mend families and be among the most redemptive narrative arcs in a person's life.' But sometimes, rehab not only fails to help people, it actively harms them, recycling them through a gauntlet of relapse, shame and risk: 'Despite the rehab industry's many claims, there is no magical cure for addiction.'
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Washington Post
Stray dog's desperate act inspires hundreds to post their rescue pup photos
Katie Simon was sitting on her porch in Jamestown, Tennessee, when she spotted a dog in the nearby woods with something trailing closely behind. 'It was this little white thing bouncing up and down through the grass,' said Simon, who lives on a 44-acre property.
Newsweek
6 days ago
- Newsweek
Ghislaine Maxwell Holds the Key to Trump's Murdoch Lawsuit—and Her Jail Cell
In case you haven't noticed, there is nothing more important to President Donald Trump than enriching himself. The uproar over releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files may have angered some of his base, but, remember, Trump has been covered with scandal his entire life, and it hasn't held him back. So, if you think that the only thing Trump wants from Epstein's co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell is for her to say Trump's friendship with Epstein was only a matter of their common interest in Rococo decoration, you'd be wrong. Sure, she will say something like this, but Maxwell can also put money in Trump's pocket. In the end, that will matter more to him. Here's how she'll do it. Trump has sued media titan Rupert Murdoch and others because his newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, published a bawdy letter it said Trump sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday. According to the Journal article, Trump's letter was part of an album Maxwell assembled containing notes from Epstein's friends. To authenticate Trump's note and the obscene drawing that accompanied it, Journal reporters claim to have seen the album and talked to people knowledgeable about it. Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, in Palm Beach, Fla.,... Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 12, 2000. MoreBut Trump emphatically denies ever writing the note, including its wish for Epstein that "may every day be another wonderful secret." He sued Murdoch and the others for defaming him—for publishing false and damaging statements about him with intent to harm his reputation. Murdoch and his fellow defendants want the case dismissed. They certainly have powerful First Amendment free speech claims to make, but they may not get an exoneration so easily. Trump may be able to drag Murdoch and his empire through the mud for a while before there's any decision about whether The Wall Street Journal was telling the truth. On that score, Maxwell may hold the key. It would be one thing if the Journal had incontestable evidence that Trump wrote the letter. Murdoch and the newspaper might win a quick judgment if that were the case, but Maxwell could block that by aiding Trump. Without a quick win, Murdoch and company will face the ugly business of the evidence gathering process known as discovery. Trump will demand to pry into the inner workers of the Murdoch empire. He will seek mountains of documents, pose endless written questions, and demand pre-trial testimony from a parade of witnesses. Too often judges don't adequately police the discovery process, and it leads to endless fights, expenses, and for Murdoch, unwelcome publicity for his personal and business life. Maxwell's course to help give Trump his chance to engage in this torment is simple. Remember, Trump has no case if it turns out he wrote the licentious letter. All Maxwell has to say is that she assembled the album and doesn't recall any letter in it from Donald Trump. In the world of Trump bribery, this should be worth a commutation—a shortening—of her sentence. For a pardon, she would do better to say that she specifically recalls that Trump did not send a greeting and that the two former friends fell out because Trump felt there was something fishy about Epstein. Wait for it. It's coming. If it wasn't discussed between Maxwell and Trump's personal lawyer and now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche during their recent long interview together, Maxwell probably doesn't need to be told what to do about it. After all, she has already received an incentive having been moved to a comfier prison. Sadly, each new Trump bribery nightmare seems to keep coming true. Some hoped he really wouldn't accept the $400 million plane from Qatar, until he did. Some thought maybe CBS would show some backbone when Trump sued it, until it didn't. And now here's the scariest thought of all. If Trump can keep his lawsuit in court and Maxwell in his pocket, Trump's Wall Street Journal lawsuit might prove to be his biggest payoff of all. Why not? Murdoch also owns Fox News. He has been Trump's biggest booster in the past, so why shouldn't Murdoch be glad if Trump's lawsuit stays in court? It becomes a perfect way for Murdoch to willingly give Trump what he wants more than anything else—money. Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge and a former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
