Parent voices concern over park neighboring Albuquerque charter school

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Seth Abeita is the parent of an 11-year-old that goes to the Native American Community Academy. He is speaking out over lewd actions at the park next to the school.

Abeita said there are sometimes needles laying on the ground, right in the open.

“It’s been a problem, but it’s been really, really become prevalent and a more common thing in the last couple of years,” he said. “You just see a lot more frequency of the people just obviously using drugs.”

Abeita said the park is often used for PE classes and to pick up students after school. It’s not just the drug use that he is concerned about, either.

“I’ve seen people – while the children are out here – people that were here in the park, kind of vagrancy, masturbating, doing really, really inappropriate things, things that children should be subjected to seeing,” Abeita said.

Abeita added that it’s forcing parents to take matters into their own hands.

“There have been times where I see parents have to chase people off,” he said. “I personally have. just this last week. The kids were getting ready to come out and on their way, over there were two gentlemen sitting at the bench, and they were beginning to shoot up and loaded up their needle and I had to chase them out of here.”

Abeita said parents at the school don’t want to leave this problem alone any longer.

“We don’t want to leave this for the incoming elementary kids, incoming middle school kids or the incoming high school kids, we really want to try and bring attention to these issues and make some positive change so we don’t have to pass on a problem that we have had to the people that come after us.”

Due to parent, safety, and traffic concerns, NACA said they recently moved student pick-up from the park to the school where they have security. 

KOB 4 reached out to APD on this and they said officers are aware of these concerns and have increased their presence in the area.

However, they said they have not seen any illegal activity.