MOBILE COUNTY, Ala. — The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office has released photographs of the damage left behind by vandals at the Tanner Williams Community Center, documenting a break-in that shut off water to the park’s restroom and concession building and closed both the restrooms and the splash pad at the start of the week.
The photos, released Tuesday afternoon, show damage to hand dryers, water bottle dispensers, bathroom signs, a coupon stand, soap dispensers and the sinks, according to the sheriff’s office. Investigators are asking anyone with information about the incident to call 251-574-8633.
No arrests have been announced, and no one has been charged.
What Happened at the Park
Sheriff Paul Burch said someone — and possibly more than one person — got into Tanner Williams Park after it closed on Friday, Sept. 11, and worked their way through the restroom and concession area causing widespread destruction.
Investigators say sinks, toilets and water fountains were damaged. Faucets were torn off the fixtures. Hand dryers were damaged. Soap dispensers were pulled off the walls and thrown out into the field.
The broken plumbing left water running, and county crews had no choice but to shut off service to the entire building. That single decision is what cascaded into the closures: with no water, the restrooms could not operate, and the splash pad — which shares the building’s water supply — had to come offline with them.
Restrooms and Splash Pad Closed for Repairs
Mobile County announced in a news release that the Tanner Williams Park restrooms and splash pad would be closed for repairs beginning Monday, Sept. 14. A temporary portable restroom has been placed at the park for visitors in the meantime.
County officials said ball games can continue while the work is underway, with portable toilets planned so the playground and athletic fields stay open. Commissioner Connie Hudson said the county hopes to finish repairs within days.
For a park that hosts youth baseball and softball, the loss of a restroom building in the middle of a season is more than an inconvenience. It complicates scheduling, concessions and the basic logistics of hosting families for an evening of games.
“It’s very disruptive when you have ball games and such because there’s no facilities,” Burch said. “All the plans had to be made to be able to continue on.”
‘No Respect for Property or the Law’
Hudson, who represents Mobile County Commission District 2, said she was saddened to learn what had happened at a park built specifically to serve children and families.
“It’s disheartening that you work on these projects to provide these types of amenities, particularly for the children,” Hudson said. “And then somebody comes along that has apparently no respect for property or the law and does this kind of damage.”
The commissioner said the destruction extended to drain pipes, faucets, outlets and water fountains.
Hudson said parks and recreation are a core part of quality of life in the county’s unincorporated communities, where a single park often serves as the only public gathering place for miles.
“People want to be able to enjoy sports, recreation, and enjoy life that way,” she said.
Burch made a similar point about what the facility represents to the surrounding community.
“Having an outlet for kids, sports are really key to growing up healthy and just showing up as a community in a central gathering place,” Burch said. “That’s what makes communities stronger.”
Cameras and Internet Service Are Coming
Hudson said the county is moving forward with plans to bring internet service and security cameras to Tanner Williams Park — an investment that would not have been an obvious priority for a rural ball field a few years ago.
“It’s costly to do these kind of things, but apparently that’s what we’re going to have to do because we want to catch these perpetrators,” Hudson said. “Anybody that goes out and damages things, we need to figure out who they are and hold them responsible.”
The two pieces go together, and the order matters. Modern surveillance cameras are generally useless in a remote location without a data connection: footage either has to be stored locally on a recorder that a vandal can damage or steal, or it has to be uploaded somewhere off-site. Internet service at the park is what makes cameras worth installing, because it allows video to leave the building in real time and allows the system to be monitored remotely rather than checked by someone driving out to the site.
That is a recurring problem for rural public facilities across Mobile County. Parks sit on large parcels, often at the end of county roads, with no staff after hours and no nearby businesses whose cameras might capture something useful. The infrastructure that makes a suburban park easy to monitor simply is not there.
Patrols Will Increase, but Deputies Cannot Live There
Burch said the sheriff’s office will step up patrols around the park following the break-in, while acknowledging the limits of that approach. Deputies cannot be stationed at a single park around the clock, and the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office is responsible for patrolling a large unincorporated area that includes communities spread across the western half of the county toward the Mississippi line.
That reality is a large part of why investigators are leaning on the public. Burch asked anyone with information to submit an anonymous tip through the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office website or to call dispatch.
“We appreciate any tips we can get because the people need to be held accountable,” Burch said.
In cases like this one, tips are frequently the only viable lead. There is no victim who saw a face, no vehicle description from a witness, and — in this instance — no camera that was watching. What investigators have is physical damage, a window of time after the park closed Friday night, and the likelihood that whoever did it told someone.
The Park Itself
Tanner Williams Community Park sits on Tanner Williams Road in the Tanner Williams community of west Mobile County, an unincorporated area near Wilmer that carries a 36587 mailing address. The roughly 12-acre park has been part of the Mobile County parks system since 2006.
Its current form is largely the product of a major upgrade completed in 2017, paid for with more than $850,000 in Commission District 2 funds. That project delivered the concession and restroom building, asphalt parking with security lighting, playground equipment with shade structures, the splash pad, softball field lighting, practice field backstop fencing, and additional concrete walks and bench seating.
The park today includes baseball and softball diamonds, the splash pad, a shade canopy, picnic area with a grill, playgrounds and a paved walking path of about a mile and a half, along with the restroom and concession building at the center of it. Admission is free, and the park is open during daylight hours except on game nights.
In other words, nearly every fixture damaged last weekend was installed as part of the same investment that turned the site into a real community park — which is why Hudson’s frustration ran to the projects themselves rather than only to the repair bill.
What Vandalism Costs a County Park
The direct expense of replacing sinks, faucets, hand dryers, soap dispensers and drain lines is real but recoverable. The harder costs are the ones that do not appear on an invoice: the weeks a splash pad is dark in the last warm stretch of the year, the leagues that have to rearrange around portable toilets, the volunteer hours redirected from running concessions to cleaning up.
There is also the question of what gets funded next. County commission district funds are finite. Money spent restoring a restroom building to the condition it was in a week ago, and money spent wiring a rural park for internet and cameras, is money not spent adding something the park does not yet have.
How to Submit a Tip
The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office is asking anyone who saw activity at Tanner Williams Park after hours on Friday, Sept. 11, or who has any information about who was responsible, to come forward. Deputies can be reached at 251-574-8633. Anonymous tips may also be submitted through the sheriff’s office website.
The investigation remains ongoing. Anyone eventually accused in the case is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.