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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 13, 2018)
A10 OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian Thursday, December 13, 2018 Cops: Police chiefs have concerns as state mandates new data collection Continued from Page A1 body to be a male or female, doesn’t mean they are male or female,” Edmiston said. “And when you perceive race, I think you are on a slippery slope.” Boardman Police Chief Rick Stokoe expressed a similar concern. “I don’t want our officers to guess,” he said. “That’s not what our job is. We’re to go out and look for crime.” Boardman police and most other agencies in Uma- tilla and Morrow coun- ties rely on the same police records management sys- tem, Sun Ridge Inc., which is creating software to help agencies gather the data. Stokoe said Boardman police will start in as soon as the software clicks. Pendleton Police Chief Stuart Roberts said habit- ual offenders raise another red flag. Pendleton has some drivers who are members of minorities and who receive multiple traffic citations a week. “That totally taints your statistical information,” he said. And while the state has promised to contact agen- cies when blips arise, Rob- erts said he found that hard to believe given the 180 or so agencies in Oregon. Data collection is nothing new for police. Oregon law ‘I DON’T WANT OUR OFFICERS TO GUESS,’ HE SAID. ‘THAT’S NOT WHAT OUR JOB IS. WE’RE TO GO OUT AND LOOK FOR CRIME.’ Staff photo by E.J. Harris Pendleton Police officer Cass Clark checks his notebook while working on a recent burglary case on a computer recently at the Pendleton Police Department. requires agencies to report crime data, which Oregon State Police sift through and compile each year into reports of several hundred pages to show everything from the number of murders in Oregon to officer assaults. According to state police, the Oregon Annual Uni- form Crime Reports have an error rate of approximately 1 percent. Yet the 2017 report, the most recent for a full year, shows gaps in the 162 agen- cies it lists. The Harney County Sheriff’s Office and University of Oregon Police Department were among 17 agencies that did not sub- mit up to six months of data in time for the 2017 report, and 25 agencies, often small and rural, submitted no data, including the sher- iff’s offices of Grant, Gil- liam, Sherman and Wallowa counties. Pendleton police did not submit 11 months of data for the 2017 report. Rob- erts explained there were hang-ups in trying to ensure the data’s error rate did not exceed the 4 percent stan- dard. The department finally provided the statistics for 2017 in late November. Roberts said the race and gender data could run into similar issues. About 60 per- cent of agencies in Oregon have 10 or fewer people, he said, and those smaller departments often do not have a records manager to check the accuracy of the information, creating room for error-ridden data. Pendleton police does not have to start gathering the data until July 1, 2021, but Roberts said the department, like Boardman, will go with it as soon as the software allows. But he has doubts about what it all could lead to. “If they find some bad actors out there, more power to them,” Roberts said. “But I think they will find with all the amounts of data out there, they aren’t going to know one way or another.” Even he, like the other chiefs, said their depart- ments will do what the Leg- islature requires. Communication: Grants give teachers tech boost for life skills Continued from Page A1 app for two iPads for use in the Life Skills classroom. Carlson said some stu- dents have the app on their personal tablets, and she can see it being useful both in and outside of school. During the school day, she plans to have students program spelling words or comprehension questions specific to the lesson on the tablets. Highland Hills principal Jake Bacon said when he observed Carlson teaching, all the students were able to respond to her questions with the use of the app. Outside of school, Carl- son said the app can ben- efit students in daily communication. “I could see it being really useful for kids who want to order something at a restaurant,” she said. “For a person who can’t communicate in traditional ways, that’s huge.” Across town, Armand Larive Middle School teacher Lori White wanted a way to help her stu- dents be able to make their voices heard on stage. White, a language arts teacher, began teach- ing theater at the school a few years ago, and wanted Staff photo by E.J. Harris Instructor Mindy Walchli, center, helps students recycle office paper from classrooms in a life skills class at Sandstone Middle School in Hermiston. to purchase some micro- phones and headsets for students to use during performances. They started with three headsets, but that limited the number of students that could be on stage at any time. “The class is very popu- lar,” she said. “Last term I had 48 kids sign up.” Two years ago, she said, she applied for a HEF grant and was able to pur- chase seven headsets, and with this year’s grant, she bought four more. The headsets are also used by other teachers throughout the district, she said. This January, White said, the students will be performing a comedy-mur- der mystery. White said the drama program has been a place for students who may not have found one elsewhere. “Some kids don’t do music, they don’t do sports — there are kids who want to be a part of some- thing, they want to per- form, but they’re not in those other niches,” she said. “And kids who may not fit the normal mode of what people think are actors, they come out and are spectacular.” White received $1,200 from HEF for the headsets. Vacation: Council explores collecting tax money on vacation rentals Continued from Page A1 consultant after she retired in 2014. In a region where some communities have banned vacation rentals altogether, Johnson helped Astoria to help capture more lodging tax revenue and crack down on illegal rentals. On Airbnb alone, there’s more than 300 vacation rentals available in the Astoria area. While Astoria doesn’t ban whole-home vacation rentals completely, they are prohibited in residen- tial areas. Residents are allowed to rent out a room or a portion of their home in the short term as long as it remains owner occupied, a setup the city refers to as homestay lodging. Johnson said Astoria originally adopted these rules because vacation rentals were tightening the housing market for per- manent city dwellers and affecting neighborhoods’ quality of life through con- gestion and overcrowding. “We don’t want to be a second home community,” she said. Astoria further strength- ened those laws this year when it required homestay lodging providers to acquire business license and prohibiting them from advertising online without one. Johnson said the new code makes it easier for city officials to root out illegal vacation rentals by cross-referencing them with their business license database. The city expects the license fees — $250 per year for the first two years and $75 per year after that — will subsidize the cost of enforcing the code. Although Pendleton is a ways off from dealing with the type of vacation rental market Astoria has, it is considering other measures to collect more lodging tax money. Beard said he would like to see the city collect its lodging taxes on a monthly basis instead of quarterly McKay Creek Estates FREE Cognitive Screening Is Mom a little more forgetful lately? There are many early warning signs of a potential memory disorder, such as Alzheimer’s disease. That’s why we’re offering a FREE and CONFIDENTIAL cognitive screening. We encourage anyone who is concerned about cognitive decline to take this short, in-person screening. The screening is administered by a qualified health care professional. To schedule your cognitive screening today, please call (541) 704-7146. McKay Creek Estates 7607 Southgate Pl. Pendleton, OR 97807 www.PrestigeCare.com because some hotel own- ers or managers use the tax money they owe as a “slush fund” instead of paying. Finance Director Linda Carter said only two hotels are behind on their pay- ments, which equates to less than $10,000 owed to the city. Carter said collection has gotten better since the city strengthened its penal- ties for late payments, and switching to monthly col- lection would overburden finance department staff and the city attorney. She added that the cor- porate-owned hotels tend to pay their taxes on time, but the smaller, family-owned operations are the facilities that occasionally give the city trouble. “How much work are we doing just to catch that one ma and pa that may go south at some point?” she said. “I don’t know.”
