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About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 17, 2020)
PAGE A8, KEIZERTIMES, JANUARY 17, 2020 SPEED, continued from Page A1 The tumult caught the at- tention of Carol Doerfl er and Patti Tischer, presidents of the West Keizer Neighborhood Association and Greater Gub- ser Neighborhood Associa- tion, respectively. The pair have been close- ly watching the conversations and even experienced some of the infractions themselves. Tischner said she has been passed on McLeod Lane Northeast while traveling the speed limit multiple times. “There are people who come to meetings and com- plain and there was a recent discussion on Nextdoor[. com] that had more than 150 people talking about it,” Do- erfl er said. At traffi c safety meetings, residents repeatedly asked for more traffi c enforcement, but, at best, the city current- ly has three offi cers dedicated to traffi c control (See related story on Page A1). In addition to attending to resident com- plaints, those same offi cers are called in as back-up when re- sponding to major incidents and are frequently expected to be seen by the public in mul- tiple places at the same time. Keizer police once had a reputation of being tough on traffi c control matters and Doerfl er advocates for a re- turn to those days. “It may be time to do that again, to maybe get that rep- utation back,” Doerfl er said. “They could change the speeds but, if they're going to ignore 25-mile an hour sign, they're going to ignore 20- mile an hour sign.” Doerfl er added that the complaints make neighbor- hood traffi c seem like an ep- idemic. She and Tischer are hoping to get more of the res- idents with concerns to come to neighborhood association meetings before heading to the city. “I don't know whether people look at the neighbor- hood associations as just a bunch of people getting to- gether and complaining, but we've actually accomplished some things. You just got to keep after it, hammering, hammering and hammering away,” Doerfl er said. On the small scale, efforts by WKNA helped get some curbs painted to increase vis- ibility around Holiday Swim Club on 5th Avenue. WKNA also banded together with large groups of neighbors to voice concerns at public meetings in Keizer and Polk County about a quarry being used as a shooting range across the Willamette River. “I felt like being part of the neighborhood association is important because it is a way for us to support each other. We encourage the people who we encounter online to come to meetings so we can work together, but I don’t know any of them and the don’t come [to meetings],” Tischer added. The Greater Gubser Neighborhood Association meets the third Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. The West Keizer Neighborhood Association meets the second Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. The Southeast Keizer Neighborhood Association meets the fi rst Thursday of every month at 6:30 p.m. All meetings are held at the Keiz- er Civic Center. Contact the reporter editor@ keizertimes.com POLICE: ‘The problems tend to be from about 5% of drivers’ (Continued from Page A1) and 1:30 p.m. Those specifi cs gave Martin what he needed to investigate. “I went out there and sat the full two hours. The top speed was 31 mph in a 25 mph zone and that was only two cars. I also made a mental note that most of the drivers were adults,” Powell said. It’s not an uncommon oc- currence. “We can watch a car, with the proper training, and get a good feel for the speed it’s trav- eling,” Wenning said. “What they’re hearing is the sound – the muffl ers accelerating from stop signs – and it sounds like they’re going really fast, but in reality they’re not. If there’s a slight curve in the road, the curvature makes that car ap- pear that it’s going faster until it starts coming directly at you.” Wenning has worked traf- fi c in Keizer, at various level, for a decade. He teaches traffi c patrolling to incoming offi cers at the Department of Public Safety Standards & Training in Salem. He grew up in Keiz- er and some of the same spots where the current team sets up to monitor traffi c are the ones he passed by when he was a kid and teenager, but the traffi c team tries to be as responsive to complaints as possible. “If someone comes in and says there is a problem in this spot between 6 a.m. and 6:45 a.m., chances are we will catch the offender or offender be- cause there’s a pattern that isn’t going to change,” Wenning said. On the other hand if some- one comes in claiming their street is a racetrack 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it’s not a lot of info to go on. However, even armed with good infor- mation, speed enforcement isn’t a hard-and-fast science. “If you’re going 26 in a 25 mph zone, we can give some- one a ticket, but speedometers have a margin of error that we allow for so that changes the dynamic. If you’re going 10, 11 or 12 miles over the speed limit, I’ll stop you and give you a warning. If you hit 13, you’re probably getting a ticket,” Wen- ning said. Completely independent of each other, Martin and Wen- ning arrived at the same thresh- old for issuing citations. “I don’t even know where I picked it up, it was proba- bly from my training offi cers,” Powell said. But, that doesn’t give every- one the green light to push the limit. The judgement traffi c of- fi cers exercise is also situational. An offi cer might apply a differ- ent standard in an area heavily traffi cked by children or pedes- trian. Adverse weather – think, heavy fog – also enters into the equation. Even with the best of inten- tions, the other duties of the job can get in the way of the most dedicated enforcement offi cer. “If there’s a major accident, I might have to leave where I’m stationed to provide back-up for the patrol offi cers. A DUII stop might take multiple hours,” Powell said. “We always have to ask ourselves if we are being good stewards of our time.” When an offi cer can’t be present in person, radar trailers are deployed to problem spots. If there isn’t a new problem spot, Wenning will have them set up in past problem spots to make certain something wasn’t missed. Another tool, a porta- ble radar counter, can track the number of vehicles and their speed to inform an objective assessment of purported prob- lems. Another perception prob- lem is that traffi c enforcement offi cers are expected to be ev- erywhere all the time to satisfy the public. “If I’m spending a lot of time in the neighborhoods, then there are other people wondering why they’re not seeing me on River Road,” Powell said. Parking complaints are also routed through the traffi c team. And, for now, Powell and Wenning comprise the traffi c team. A sergeant that over- sees the unit is out on medical leave. The department is wait- ing for some recent recruits to fi nish police academy training and then supervised patrols be- fore it reinstituting a full two- offi cer-and-one-sergeant team. There’s already a motorcycle in Eugene needing a few replace- ment parts and waiting for a KPD rider. Ideally, Wenning would like a third offi cer to help cover Keizer traffi c, but that’s not likely given a city budget that grows almost impercep- tibly rather than by leaps and bounds. “The problems tend to be from about 5 percent of driv- ers who will keep doing the same things no matter how many tickets we give them,” Wenning said. “But we do our best to be responsive. And we also know our statistics large- ly don’t support reductions in speed.” Contact the reporter editor@ keizertimes.com WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN Do you have an item that you’d like appraised? We can do that. Need repairs or cleaning? We can do that too. 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