Twelve-year-old Miracel Eaton excitedly urged her mother toward the entrance to Pittsburgh’s Highland Park pool on a sunny Thursday afternoon.
Tamra Eaton, 55, of Highland Park, said she would’ve tagged along with her daughter for a pool day anyway, but a new rule at the site now requires all kids 15 and younger to have a chaperone who is at least 21.
The policy, city spokeswoman Maria Montaño said, was enacted after a spate of disruptions involving unaccompanied minors at that particular pool.
Eaton said she liked the chaperone rule and was surprised it hadn’t been in effect even before problems arose.
She recalled seeing a group of kids at the pool recently who “just weren’t obeying or respecting the management.”
“I think since covid, all kids are just going through some crap, so it has been an issue even at school,” she said, explaining she’s heard of lots of kids around her daughter’s age who struggle with behavioral issues.
While Eaton said she was supportive of adult supervision at the pool, she pointed out that parents can cause problems, too.
“Are the parents going to be well behaved?” she asked as she headed into the pool area. “Because parents can get very nasty.”
It’s unclear how the new policy is being enforced. A TribLive reporter on Thursday saw at least one group enter the pool area with children who appeared to be under 15 and a man who appeared to be their adult chaperone without anyone showing identification or answering questions about age.
Montaño has been unable to provide specifics on how the policy is being executed.
Highland Park pool is the only one of the 15 pools the city opened this year to implement such a requirement. Montaño this week said there were no plans to extend the policy to other sites.
The new rule at Highland Park, she said, “stems out of concerns over the number of unaccompanied minors at the pool and in the vicinity of the pool that (were) causing some concerns about the guards’ ability to focus.”
Cara Cruz, a public safety spokeswoman, said Pittsburgh police regularly monitor all city pools, but they weren’t alerted “to anything that has risen to a criminal level” at any pools since they opened on June 15.
She said there was a fight outside of Highland Park pool on June 21 after the pool had closed. The fight, she said, was between two juvenile girls involving in an ongoing dispute.
Montaño on Thursday said that the incidents that have cropped up at the pool aren’t “arrestable offenses.”
“It’s a general sense of there are a lot of unsupervised minors,” she said. “They’re coming in small groups, and before you know, it’s all these groups intermingled there that was causing concern for our guards to be able to do their job — which is to keep the people in the pool safe.”
She said there were some “scuffles” and other arguments, but nothing warranted a police response.
The new chaperone policy, she said, came at the request of aquatics staff at the Highland Park pool and was approved by Department of Parks and Recreation Director Kathryn Vargas.
The extent of problematic incidents at Highland Park pool remains unclear.
Lisa Platt, 68, of Highland Park on Thursday said that she hadn’t seen any issues at the pool despite hearing rumors of fights. She dismissed concerns about potential problems when she goes for a swim at the neighborhood pool, which she says is often packed with local kids.
“I think it’s a good rule,” she said of the new policy. “I think that’s going to help.”
Nikia Pitts, 47, of Penn Hills, was selling food and drinks from a cart just outside the pool. She said she’s at the pool about five days a week and has never seen any fights or disruptions. She said she sees kids jump around and get a little noisy sometimes, but they seem to be simply having fun.
She criticized the policy change that now bans young kids from coming to the pool without an adult. She said she often saw kids coming by themselves, but never saw a problem with it.
Since the rule change, she said, now there are “hardly any” kids at the pool compared to before the rule went into effect last weekend.
City Councilwoman Deb Gross, D-Highland Park, said she hadn’t heard much from residents about the situation.
“I’m still waiting to see exactly how the policy will be enforced,” she said. “I think it’s a shame, but it’s hard for me to judge what are the issues the aquatics team was facing.”
She said officials will need to “strike the right balance” between ensuring safety and allowing kids to be kids this summer.
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“We all kind of relish the idea of kids being able to be out and about in our parks without a chaperone,” Gross said. “When they get older, they want a sense of independence — and it’s good for them.”