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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2018
Man pleads not guilty to
burglary, sexual abuse
police report.
Swint has been charged
with two counts of first-de-
A Clatskanie man pleaded gree burglary, third-degree
not guilty Monday after sexual abuse, strangulation,
allegedly breaking into a fourth-degree assault and
Westport woman’s home and first-degree criminal trespass.
touching her inappropriately.
Appearing via video at his
The woman was sleep- arraignment Monday, Swint
ing just before 3 a.m.
stated that his name
on Dec. 29 when
was actually Jesus
she allegedly woke
Alvarez and that
up to a man chok-
he is 34 years old.
ing her and sex-
When the arraign-
ually rubbing up
ment concluded, he
against her. During
stood up and clapped
the encounter, the
his hands together
Robert
man allegedly asked James Swint twice before the
the woman if she
video feed ended.
wanted to see him naked.
Swint has also been
Robert James Swint, 29, accused of second-degree
was later arrested in connec- theft and harassment after
tion with the incident. The allegedly stealing a soda
victim allegedly asked Swint from West Mart Grocery in
to stay away a couple of Westport in October.
months ago. After his arrest,
Bail has been set at
he told a Clatsop County $75,000. Swint has been
Sheriff’s Office deputy that scheduled for an early reso-
he choked her to “help her lution conference later this
sexually,” according to a month.
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Justin Parker, Matt Keefer, Genesee Dennis, Seth Col-
lins, Dan Mullery, Katie Bulletset, Chris Dugan, Doug
Roberts, Roy Dague and Mike Smith with Mayor Jay
Barber and Chief Joey Daniels.
Seaside firefighters
honored for work
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
SEASIDE — Mayor Jay
Barber joined Fire Chief
Joey Daniels Monday night
in recognition of members of
Seaside Fire and Rescue who
battled fires in 2017 both
near and far.
“I do appreciate the coun-
cil support and the citizen
support,” Daniels said. “Our
volunteers do a great job and
so do our career staff. This
just adds to everything we
do.”
As partners in the Clat-
sop County strike team, Sea-
side sent two firefighters
to the Millie Fire near Sis-
ters in mid-August. When
dry weather and high winds
fanned flames at the Chetco
Bar Fire in Brookings, three
Seaside firefighters joined the
task force — a period when
the department had Hood to
Coast and Labor Day cover-
age to maintain.
In September, four Sea-
side firefighters joined crews
to fight the Eagle Creek Fire
near Hood River. In Octo-
ber, five Seaside firefighters
battled the Santa Rosa, Cal-
ifornia, blaze. And before
year ended, Seaside firefight-
ers headed to Ventura County
for more than two weeks in
December to aid crews there.
“When a person becomes
a firefighter, their greatest act
of bravery has been accom-
plished,” Barber said. “What
comes after is all in the line
of work. Thank you again,
chief, for all their work.”
Project to help fish travel
coming to Crooked River
Associated Press
BEND — A project
designed to help fish popula-
tions travel more effectively
is coming to an Oregon river.
Construction is set to
begin this spring on a 28-foot
fish ladder at the Opal
Springs Hydroelectric Proj-
ect near the mouth of the
Crooked River, The Bend
Bulletin reported .
The primary goal of the
$10.7 million project is to
allow Chinook salmon and
steelhead in the Deschutes
Basin to travel up the
Crooked River more effec-
tively, reuniting discon-
nected fish populations, Ore-
gon Department of Fish and
Wildlife Fish Biologist Brett
Hodgson said.
The ladder will make it
possible for fish to move
upstream and downstream
more freely, said Darek
Staab, project manager for
Trout Unlimited’s Deschutes
Chapter.
“It provides access to
approximately 120 river
miles of the Crooked River
and its tributaries,” Hodgson
said. “Passage and access to
the Crooked River is really
critical.”
The concrete ladder will
have 38 individual segments
where the fish can rest in the
water, project consultant Fin-
lay Anderson said.
Ed Pugh, general man-
ager of the Deschutes Valley
Water District, which oper-
ates the Opal Springs Hydro-
electric Project, said they’ve
been looking for ways to
improve fish passage on the
Crooked River for more than
a decade. But a lack of fund-
ing and disagreements over
the specific requirements
for the fish ladder kept the
project from getting off the
ground, Pugh said.
The water district intends
to break ground on the proj-
ect in April, with the proj-
ect expected to be complete
by the end of next year, Pugh
said.
“We’re pretty excited
about this project finally get-
ting started,” he said.
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Portland man arrested after
allegedly robbing Mini Mart
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
A Portland man was
arrested early Sunday morn-
ing after allegedly robbing the
Mini Mart on West Marine
Drive.
Kevin Patrick Kelty, 27,
tried to buy alcohol at the
store but was denied because
it was after 2:30 a.m. He
returned about 30 minutes
later, allegedly grabbed beer
and tried to walk out. He
allegedly threw bottles at a
store employee who tried to
prevent him from leaving.
When officers arrived, they
found the employee laying
down in front of the store with
shattered glass around him.
They also spoke with a per-
son who went to the store with
Kelty and was waiting outside.
That person was not charged.
Just after 4:30 a.m. police
responded to reports of a man
who was knocking on a door
and attempting to turn the door
knob at a nearby residence on
the 170 block of Duane Street.
Police arrested Kelty at the
scene.
Kelty has been charged
with second-degree robbery
and fourth-degree assault.
He pleaded not guilty to the
charges Monday, and bail has
been set at $250,000.
Some law agencies push back on selling guns
Weapons later
used in crimes
By MARTHA BELLISLE
Associated Press
SEATTLE — Kyle Juhl
made one last attempt to patch
things up with his fiancée, then
took back his ring, put a gun
to his head and pulled the trig-
ger as she and her mother ran
from the apartment. The bul-
let went through a wall and
narrowly missed a neighbor’s
head as she bent to pick up her
little boy.
The Smith & Wesson 9 mm
that Juhl used to kill himself
in Yakima in 2014 was famil-
iar to law enforcement: The
Washington State Patrol had
seized it years earlier while
investigating a crime and then
arranged its sale back to the
public. It eventually fell into
Juhl’s hands, illegally.
It’s fears of tragedies
like that, or worse, that have
created a split among law
enforcement officials over the
reselling of confiscated guns
by police departments, a long-
time practice allowed in most
states.
Juhl’s gun was among
nearly 6,000 firearms that were
used in crimes and then sold by
Washington state law enforce-
ment agencies since 2010,
an Associated Press review
found. More than a dozen of
those weapons later turned up
in new crime investigations
inside the state, according to a
yearlong AP analysis that used
hundreds of public records to
match up serial numbers.
The guns were used to
threaten people, seized at
gang hangouts, discovered in
drug houses, possessed ille-
gally by convicted felons, hid-
den in a stolen car, and taken
from a man who was commit-
ted because of erratic behavior.
While those dozen or so
guns represent an extremely
small percentage of the
resold firearms, some police
departments contend the law
shouldn’t be doing anything
to put weapons back on the
street. The AP did not look at
how many of the resold guns
figured in crimes committed
out of state, so the actual num-
ber of misused weapons could
be higher.
“We didn’t want to be
the agency that sold the gun
to somebody who uses it in
another crime,” said Capt.
Jeff Schneider of the Yakima
Police Department, which sold
guns until about a decade ago
but now melts them down. He
added: “While there is almost
an unlimited supply of fire-
arms out there, we don’t need
to make the problem worse.”
Similarly, the Interna-
tional Association of Chiefs of
Police says confiscated guns
should be destroyed because
putting them back in circula-
tion “increases the availabil-
ity of firearms which could
be used again to kill or injure
additional police officers and
citizens.” Also, federal agen-
cies must destroy seized fire-
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
Ssales clerk Tom Wallitner holds up a Norinco model 54-1 pistol during an auction at
Johnny’s Auction House in Rochester, Wash., in October.
arms unless they are needed as
evidence or being used by the
agency.
Raises money
On the other side of the
debate, some law enforce-
ment officials say the selling of
guns raises money to purchase
crime-fighting equipment, and
if the practice were abandoned,
people would just buy weap-
ons somewhere else. In fact, a
growing number of states from
Arizona to North Carolina are
passing laws prohibiting agen-
cies from destroying guns.
“These guns are going to
be out there,” said Sheriff Will
Reichardt of Skagit County,
Washington. “If I destroy them
all, I’m just helping Reming-
ton or Winchester’s bottom
line.”
Phyllis Holcomb, a man-
ager with the Kentucky State
Police, which oversees Ken-
tucky’s gun sale program, said
such transactions have helped
equip officers with body armor
and other gear.
The debate is playing out
in Washington state, where
the state patrol is pushing back
against a state law that requires
the agency to auction off or
trade most guns.
The state patrol hasn’t sold
any weapons since 2014 and at
one point accumulated more
than 400 in the hope the Leg-
islature would change the law
and let the agency destroy
them. Democratic Rep. Tana
Senn of Bellevue is sponsor-
ing such a bill.
“I know many of the police
chiefs in my district chose not
to sell but rather to destroy,
and in their own words, ‘It’s so
we can sleep at night,’” Senn
told a legislative committee.
The National Rifle Associa-
tion opposes the plan.
“The police chiefs maybe
could sleep better if they went
out and apprehended the crim-
inals behind the guns and
didn’t worry about destroying
perfectly legal firearms that are
no more easy to purchase than
a brand-new firearm at a fire-
arms dealer,” NRA spokesman
Tom Kwieciak said.
Tragedies involving police-
sold guns have happened
throughout the U.S.
In 2010, a mentally ill man
ambushed and wounded two
Pentagon police officers with
a handgun sold by Memphis,
Tennessee, police. Also that
year, a Las Vegas court secu-
rity officer was killed by a
man with a shotgun sold by
a Memphis-area sheriff’s
office. And in 2015, an unsta-
ble man walked into City Hall
in New Hope, Minnesota, and
wounded two officers with a
shotgun sold by the Duluth
Police Department. The
department has since stopped
selling guns and now destroys
them.
The weapons sold back to
the public in Washington state
include Colt, Glock and Ruger
pistols, 12-gauge shotguns,
.22-caliber rifles and assault
weapons such as AR-15 and
SKS rifles. All such sales
are handled through feder-
ally licensed firearms deal-
ers, including auction houses,
pawnshops and sporting goods
stores. Before buyers can take
their guns home, they must
pass an FBI background check.
A warning
On a recent Friday night,
owner John West of Johnny’s
Auction House in Rochester,
Washington, about 80 miles
south of Seattle, launched into
his rapid-fire bid-calling to a
packed room, selling necklaces
and coins. Before he offered up
the first police-confiscated gun
for sale, he had a warning.
“Straight up,” he told the
crowd, “if you cannot possess
a firearm and you can’t pass a
background check, just don’t
even bother bidding.”
There is no master list of
guns sold by police, so com-
piling one for Washington
state involved dozens of pub-
lic-records requests to indi-
vidual agencies. The federal
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives keeps
track of crime guns but refused
to release information from its
database, so the AP collected
databases from individual
agencies and compared them
with the sold guns.
One of the guns that ended
up in a new police report was
a .22-caliber handgun sold by
Longview police in 2016. In
2017, a drunken Jesse Brown
and a friend armed themselves
with the gun and two other
weapons, went to a house and
threatened two young men
they believed were selling
drugs, police said.
Longview Police Chief Jim
Duscha said that while some
resold guns may be used in
new crimes, “if they’re going
to get a weapon, they’re going
to get a weapon.” Selling guns
generates money used for drug
investigations, he said.
The Seattle Police Depart-
ment and the sheriff’s office
in surrounding King County
don’t sell crime-scene weap-
ons; they hand them over to a
foundry to be melted down at
no cost to themselves.
For years, the state patrol
traded confiscated firearms
to dealers for other gear, and
the dealers then would sell
the guns to the public. In one
exchange in 2013, the state
patrol traded in 159 weapons
and got a credit of $27,420,
which it then used to buy hand-
guns for the force.
The weapon Juhl used to
kill himself was in a batch the
state patrol traded in 2012. It
was purchased by a man in
Yakima, who sold it to some-
one else, who then sold it on
Craigslist. Juhl’s girlfriend told
police that’s where he acquired
it.
Juhl, 24, was not legally
permitted to own or possess a
gun. He received a bad-con-
duct discharge from the Army
after serving time in prison
for using the drug ecstasy and
going AWOL for about two
months. An Army spokesman
said Juhl’s criminal history
was sent to the FBI’s Criminal
Justice Information System,
but the police detective who
handled Juhl’s suicide said he
checked the FBI’s database but
didn’t find Juhl’s convictions.
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