7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018
Gun bill: ‘This is no time for an emotional response’
Continued from Page 1A
Police to notify other law
enforcement when they learn
someone has tried to obtain a
gun illegally.
Brown,
a
Democrat,
described the bill as bipartisan,
and in the House, the bill did
receive support from both par-
ties. However, in the Senate,
the 16-13 vote was split along
party lines with one exception.
Twelve Republicans and
one Democrat — Sen. Betsy
Johnson, D-Scappoose —
voted against the measure.
Johnson, who has voted against
gun control in the past, said
she opposed the bill because
it would give estranged dating
partners a way to seek revenge.
“This is no time for an emo-
tional response,” she said.
Under existing law, only
convicted abusers in domestic
relationships, such as a spouse,
former spouse, co-parent or
live-in partner, are prohibited
from having guns. The bill
would expand the ban to stalk-
ers and current and past inti-
mate partners of all kinds.
Sen. Herman Baertschiger
Jr., R-Grants Pass, said exist-
ing law already bans abusers
who have been in intimate sex-
ual relationships with their vic-
tim from buying or possessing
guns. He said the language in
the bill is full of “ambiguity”
and would likely result in other
loopholes.
A study by the Oregon
Department of Justice showed
that more than 16 Orego-
nians were killed in nine sep-
arate domestic violence inci-
dents between Dec. 25, 2016,
and Jan. 16, 2017. Not all of
the fatalities involved roman-
tic relationships. Laws aimed
at keeping guns from abus-
ers have reduced homicides
of intimate partners, accord-
ing to recent research pub-
lished in the American Journal
of Epidemiology.
Anne S. Teigen, a criminal
justice expert with the National
Conference of State Legisla-
tures, told the Associated Press
that the bill’s final approval in
Oregon marked the first time
since the Florida shooting that
a state legislature has passed a
gun-control measure,
Giffords, the anti-gun vio-
lence group led by former
U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords of
Arizona, who was shot in an
assassination attempt in 2011,
praised Thursday’s Senate
vote. “Oregon is continuing to
step up to keep guns out of the
hands of dangerous people,”
said Robin Lloyd, the group’s
government affairs director.
“Guns and domestic violence
are a particularly lethal com-
bination that have deadly con-
sequences. Once this bill is
signed loopholes will finally
be closed in state law that
let domestic abusers possess
guns.”
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
Sheriff: School officer never
went inside to confront gunman
By BRENDAN
FARRINGTON,
GARY FINEOUT and
TERRY SPENCER
Associated Press
FORT LAUDERDALE,
Fla. — The armed officer on
duty at the Florida school
where a shooter killed 17
people never went inside to
engage the gunman and has
been placed under investi-
gation, officials announced
Thursday.
The Valentine’s Day shoot-
ing at Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High School by a
gunman armed with an AR-15
style assault rifle has reignited
national debate over gun laws
and school safety, including
proposals by President Don-
ald Trump and others to des-
ignate more people — includ-
ing trained teachers — to
carry arms on school grounds.
Gun-control advocates, mean-
while, have redoubled their
push to ban assault rifles.
The school resource offi-
cer at the high school took up
a position viewing the western
entrance of the building that
was under attack for more than
four minutes, but “he never
went in,” Broward County
Sheriff Scott Israel said at a
Thursday news conference.
The shooting lasted about six
minutes.
The officer, Scot Peter-
son, was suspended with-
out pay and placed under
investigation, then chose to
resign, Israel said. When
asked what Peterson should
have done, Israel said the dep-
uty should have “went in,
addressed the killer, killed the
killer.”
A telephone message left
at a listing for Peterson by
The Associated Press wasn’t
immediately returned. An AP
reporter who later went to
Peterson’s home in a suburb
of West Palm Beach saw lights
on and cars in the driveway,
but no one answered the door
when AP attempted to get fur-
ther comment.
The sheriff said he was
“devastated, sick to my stom-
ach. There are no words. I
mean, these families lost their
children. .... I’ve been to the
funerals. ... I’ve been to the
vigils. It’s just, ah, there are no
words.”
There was also a communi-
cation issue between the per-
son reviewing the school’s
security system footage and
officers who responded to the
school.
Coral Springs Police Chief
Tony Pustizzi said during a
Thursday news conference that
the footage being reviewed
was 20 minutes old, so the
responding officers were hear-
ing that the shooter was in a
certain place while officers
already in that location were
saying that wasn’t the case.
“There was nothing wrong
with their equipment. Their
equipment works,” Pustizzi
said. “It’s just that when the
person was reviewing the tape
from 20 minutes earlier, some-
how that wasn’t communi-
cated to the officers that it was
a 20-minute delay.”
Pustizzi said the confusion
didn’t put anyone in danger.
Shooting suspect Nikolas
Cruz, 19, has been jailed on
17 counts of murder and has
admitted the attack. He owned
a collection of weapons.
Rat wars: Astoria baits 38 manholes every month
to keep the rat population down in the sewer system
Continued from Page 1A
items they wanted to include in
a city ordinance hewed closely
to what the county officials had
suggested.
By the 1950s, Asto-
ria declared itself victorious
over the rats. In 1950, E.T.
Christenson, a member of the
mayor’s rat control commit-
tee and plant manager of the
Astoria-Pillsbury flour mill,
reported it was rare to see a rat
in the city dump or along the
waterfront. The next year, the
head of a Portland firm Asto-
ria contracted with for rat con-
trol work estimated the rat
population in Astoria had been
reduced to 50 percent.
“But the fight against rats
must be maintained steadily
and conducted everywhere in
town,” he said. “If efforts were
relaxed in just one downtown
block, so that the rats could
find food and harborage, they
would increase amazingly.”
‘Go with the territory’
Rat drama has died down
over the decades, but aspects
of the war continue.
Rats are the No. 1 pest A&A
Pest Control technicians deal
with on the coast, followed
closely by ants and wood-bor-
ing beetles. The company is
based out of Portland but has
an office in Clatsop County.
Reports of a rat infesta-
tion usually begin with a fran-
tic call, technician Enrique
Nieves said. When he goes to
inspect a house, his first step is
to try and figure out how rats
are getting in.
“My rule of thumb is the
rule of thumb,” he said. “If
your thumb can fit in a hole, a
rat can basically squish down
and fit into that hole.”
Astoria baits 38 manholes
every month to keep the rat
population down in the sewer
system. One residence con-
tacts the Public Works Depart-
ment nearly every month
about rat problems. Nelson
suspects something there con-
tinues to attract rats. When
there are complaints about rats
in a specific area, city staff will
bait the nearest manhole.
The city’s building staff
occasionally gets complaints
from neighbors of abandoned
or empty houses and proper-
ties attracting vermin. There
is little Ben Small, Astoria’s
building and code enforce-
ment official, can do other than
contact the property owner and
remind them it is their respon-
sibility to make sure a building
is closed up and secure.
There is no way to estimate
the size of Astoria’s rat pop-
ulation. All Nelson knows is
that one month, a block of rat
poison at one manhole might
be completely untouched.
The next month, three blocks
might disappear. Sometimes,
a rat will suddenly run in
front of cameras the city uses
to inspect sewers and groom
itself before scampering far-
ther up the line.
There are stories about
people who heard splashing
in their bathroom and found a
rat swimming in the toilet, and
county health inspectors occa-
sionally find evidence of rats
in the restaurants they inspect.
But that’s Astoria.
“Anywhere you’ve got
water and harborage then
there’s going to be rodents,”
said Meredith Riley, a county
environmental health inspec-
tor. “They just kind of go with
the territory.”
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Warrenton Fiber’s Claremont Road mitigation project created about 50 additional
acres of wetlands by replacing a dike and tide gate with a bridge.
Port: Wetland mitigation
credits are required to offset
development affecting wetlands
Continued from Page 1A
The Port is in the per-
mitting phase of a proj-
ect to realign a taxiway on
the southern side of runway
8-26 and bring the World
War II-era airport up to
FAA’s geometric standards.
Permitting and construction
are mostly funded by FAA
grants.
“In order to get through
the planning and permit-
ting phase, we need to have
the credits in hand,” Gary
Kobes, the Port’s airport
manager, told the Port Com-
mission on Tuesday.
Wetland
mitigation
credits are required to off-
set development affecting
wetlands.
Typically, the purchase of
credits
doesn’t
hap-
pen until the construc-
tion phase, Kobes said.
But the relocation of the
taxiway is expected to impact
Vera Slough, a tidal inlet
winding from Youngs Bay
south along the western edge
of the airport, triggering an
environmental assessment.
Warrenton Fiber in 2012
breached a dike on Clare-
mont Road near the John
Day River, replacing it and a
tidal gate with a bridge and
inundating about 50 acres
of land upstream. The proj-
ect also entailed convert-
ing an invasive-dominated
plant community to a native,
freshwater tidal wetland.
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Staff of the Month
20th ANNUAL CLATSOP
CASA CELEBRATION
Thursday, March 15, 2018, 6-9 pm
Bridgewater Bistro • 20 Basin Street, Astoria
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