August 31, 2016
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INSIDE
The
Week in Review
This page
Sponsored by:
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L OCAL N EWS
pages 6-7
O PINION
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M ETRO
Intersecting Safety and Trust
Portland Assistant Police Chief Chris Uehara meets a local family at a bicycle safety fiesta at the
North Precinct in northeast Portland advancing both traffic safety and community trust. With help
from the adjacent Blazer’s Boys and Girls Club and the Portland Fire Bureau, the Aug. 19 event
drew 350 community members and came with free school supplies and bicycle helmets and most
importantly bike safety tips.
You Can Now Text 911
New technology debuts in Portland area
C ervante p ope
t he p ortland o bserver
Multnomah County is among
six counties in Oregon and three
in Washington that now have the
option to text 911 in the case of an
emergency.
The new emergency communi-
cation service debuted last week
in the Portland area as a means to
offer an option to those who may
not be able to use their voice due
to a physical handicap such as be-
ing deaf, hard of hearing or mute,
or in situations where sound is im-
perative to survival.
911 Communications Manag-
er Cheryl Bledsoe of Clackamas
County said in an interview with
Oregon Public Broadcasting that
texting 911 would be appropri-
ate for having an intruder in your
home or observing a crime like
domestic violence where you
don’t want the parties involved to
know you’re calling for help. But
people are encouraged to always
call 911 first (or use relay services
or TTY) whenever possible.
A few drawbacks do come with
the text-emergency service, aside
from the sometimes unreliable
by
Arts &
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ENTERTAINMENT
C LASSIFIEDS
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R ELIGION
C ALENDAR
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Emergency dispatchers in Portland and the surrounding area now
have new technology that allows people to send text messages to
report emergencies. (AP photo)
tendency of text messages to not
send.
“One of the big drawbacks for
us is that the public cannot send
us multimedia messages. Those
include emojis, pictures and video
images,” says Bledsoe. “We want
full words, but we want to make
sure that if folks typically put
emojis in their conversation that
they not do that for 911, because
that actually corrupts the whole
message and we will not receive
any part of the message that they
might be intending to send us.”
Though it might seem unlikely
C ontinued on p age 4