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
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