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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
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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.”