Louisville man remembers days as park ranger as city plans for new program

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville is continuing to work on plans to create a pilot program to get park rangers in the city.

The city's latest budget just recently passed with $300,000 for a park ranger program. However, the parks department is only in the early stages of figuring out what it will look like.

"We're looking to see what lessons learned from other cities have, what they used, how it's worked for them and how it might fit best for our city. But we know that each part of our city is unique and diverse, so we know and recognize that what works in one part of our city or one park in our city is not going to work and be the most effective in the other parks in the city," said Bridget Frailley, executive administrator of park safety and security.

Frailley said the city is in the program development stage figuring out things from the job description, to branding, vehicles, and more.

"We're really excited," she said.

But this isn't the first time the city has had a program for park rangers. Life-long Louisvilllian, Ronald Johnson, said he was a park ranger here in the late 1970s.

"As you can tell, this certificate has been around a long time," he said, pulling it out of an envelope filled with memorabilia he's kept for decades.

Ronald Johnson's Police Academy graduation certificate — Pictured: in this frame grab taken from video, Ronald Johnson, a former park ranger in Louisville, the certificate he received after graduating from the police academy in the 1970s. (WDRB image)

"I just loved coming out and meeting people, seeing people, helping people, whatever it took," Johnson said.

Ronald Johnson holds park ranger badge from the 1970s. (WDRB photo from June 28, 2024)

Now he looks back fondly at a picture of his graduating class.

Picture showing Ronald Johnson's Police Academy graduating class — Pictured: in this frame grab taken from video, Ronald Johnson, a former park ranger in Louisville, holds a picture of his graduating class from the police academy. (WDRB image)

Johnson said he had to attend the police academy to become a park ranger. He said he had arrest powers, but his favorite part of the job was helping people.

"I loved the atmosphere and being out in the parks in the morning time or the evenings, according to what shift I was on," he said.

Johnson believes having a park ranger program in the city is good idea to help improve the parks and said he thinks it would need backing from Louisville Metro Police. Johnson said aside from being in the parks, his role as a ranger also extended to community centers and pools.

Ronald Johnson looks through old photographs and papers from his time as a park ranger in Louisville. (WDRB image from June 28, 2024)

Currently, Frailley said the Parks Department in the middle of a three-month, increased collaboration with LMPD to increase enforcement after hours at Iroquois Park. She said officers with the third division are giving warnings and seeing if there are repeat offenders of people being in the park after it's closed for the night.

She said the hope is to cut down on the number of people in the parks after hours and increase positive activities going on during the day.

"When it's complete, we're going to look at the data and see if it made any difference," Frailley said. "It may or may not have made any difference, but we're going to see if it made any difference."

Depending on that data, that enforcement could spread to other parks and potentially help shape the Park Rangers program. The goal is to cut down on illegal activities like ATV use, vandalism, drug trafficking, and other crimes.

"The people who need the space the most, are the people who are most negatively affected by that (activity)," Frailley said, adding that problems in the parks are multi-faceted.

There's no set date yet for when the new, pilot program for park rangers in Louisville could officially get started.

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