MARYSVILLE – If you think transients in town are becoming more aggressive you are right.

“There’s a new group this year – younger, obstinate,” Police Chief Rick Smith said this week.

As a result, police are stepping up patrols at Ebey Waterfront, Comeford and skateboard parks, along with downtown. They are even doing sweeps with their drug dogs.

“We’re doing whatever we can to get them out of here,” Smith said at Mayor Jon Nehring’s Coffee Klatch at the Shoultes Fire Station Monday. “I don’t care where they go,” we just don’t want them here.

He added that the school resource officers will again be on bikes patrolling the downtown area when schools gets out for the summer.

As for transients in general, Nehring said the city has mapped out where all of their encampments are and makes periodic sweeps. “Public Works goes in and cleans up the needles, so hopefully you don’t run into it,” Nehring told the audience of a couple dozen.

He added that drugs are a nationwide problem.

Some places “make this look like a church summer camp,” he said.

Nehring said most of the crime locally is connected somehow with drugs. He said many addicts choose not to even try to get off drugs. Those are the people the city needs to be tough on.

“We have a low tolerance for people who don’t want to help themselves. If life gets miserable, maybe they’ll check into rehab,” he said, adding that would be cheaper and more humane than putting them in jail.

Smith added that local police actually ask addicts if they want help, and the majority say no.

Nehring said if they do want help, the city owns some homes where people can get a second chance.

“But they have to want to try,” he said. “We have a compassionate side. We are a caring community.”

Nehring said anytime people see a couple of “shifty” characters, call 9-1-1. The mayor was asked about Mother Nature’s Window, which also has been hit with transients that spill into the neighborhood. Nehring said police will make a sweep through that area.

Parks director Jim Ballew said that type of problem should diminish because there is a new caretaker there. He added that while there is no money yet for improvements, the plan for that area is exciting – trails, an open meadow and an amphitheater. “It will be an acoustic opportunity with nature,” Ballew said.

Ballew added that when summer hits and people start using the parks the transients usually take off.

“They don’t want to deal with that,” he said of families.

South end annex

At the event, everybody was talking about the new Ebey Waterfront Trail.

Nehring was asked with more people using the waterfront park, how would their parked cars be protected from potential break-ins?

The answer is just across the railroad tracks.

The city has opened a new police annex on First Street. Just like at the north annex on 156th Street toward Smokey Point, officers will be able to write up reports and get right back on patrol, instead of having to drive all the way downtown to the Public Safety Building.

“It’s working already,” assistant police chief Jeff Goldman said Tuesday of the south annex. “We made some arrests this morning.”

Goldman said just having an annex there should cut down crime. “Visibility is a deterrent in itself,” he said.

Police will be checking the areas because they want to keep the parks and downtown family friendly.

“Dust and dawn are when they are most active,” Goldman said of transients who sometimes bother the public.

The new annex will provide some other benefits, too. It should free up some much-needed space in the Public Safety Building. And the huge parking lot next to the annex will be used for a police defensive driving course.