A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Ambulance
proposal likely
was doomed
E
ven if the Baker City Council had decided
to send a proposal to Baker County, out-
lining how the city fi re department could
continue operating ambulances, it likely would
have been a fool’s errand, doomed to failure.
Th is was probably to be expected, considering
City Manager Jonathan Cannon’s dogged insis-
tence that the city can’t aff ord to continue oper-
ating ambulances for even one more fi scal year
without a major cash infusion from the county.
Th is despite a lack of compelling evidence that
running ambulances, as the city has done since
the 1930s, has been siphoning great amounts
of dollars from other departments in the city’s
general fund over the past several years.
Th e City Council voted 7-0 on May 10 to have
Cannon prepare a proposal to meet the coun-
ty’s June 3 deadline. Two weeks later councilors
voted 4-2 to reverse that decision. Th e deadline
came and went, and on June 8, county com-
missioners voted to contract with Metro West
Ambulance of Hillsboro to replace the Baker
City Fire Department.
Th us ended one of the more disappointing,
and inexplicable, City Council actions in the
past few decades.
Th e city initially refused to release the draft
proposal Cannon was working on. Th e Baker
City Herald appealed that decision to District
Attorney Greg Baxter under Oregon’s Public Re-
cords Law. Baxter concluded that the draft was
not exempt from public disclosure. It’s available
on the city’s website, bakercity.com.
Although county commissioners Bruce Nich-
ols and Mark Bennett have said publicly that
they had hoped the city would submit a propos-
al, it’s diffi cult to imagine how commissioners
could have picked the city over Metro West,
based on the document Cannon was working
on.
Most notably, the city’s draft proposal, which
actually includes two scenarios, states that “Bak-
er City will require the following non-negotiable
amounts from Baker County for each year of the
contract.”
Th ose amounts range from $850,000 to
$1,600,000 per year.
Baker County contributed $100,000 to the city
for ambulance service in the current fi scal year.
It defi es belief that county commissioners would
— or, indeed, could — have agreed to the city’s
“non-negotiable” request for such larger sums.
Metro West, which has the advantage of being
able to collect a larger percentage of its costs,
compared with the city, from the Medicare and
Medicaid patients who make up a majority of
local ambulance patients, did not request any
fi nancial subsidy for the duration of the fi ve-
year contract.
Th e other private company that sent a pro-
posal, Capstone Transportation, which operates
as Victory EMS in the Boise area, proposed a
county subsidy of $1,280,000 the fi rst year, with
expected 3% annual increases thereaft er.
Th e vast diff erence in the monetary terms be-
tween the Metro West and Victory EMS propos-
als is one reason that choosing the former fi rm
was “basically an easy pick,” Nichols said.
Given that Baker City’s draft proposal called
for a county contribution similar to Victory
EMS’, it seems likely that the city would have
been as distant a runner-up to Metro West.
Ultimately, it looks as though the city’s ambu-
lance service — and the larger fi refi ghting work-
force it made possible but which the city is now
losing — was all but doomed from the council’s
March 22 vote to send the ultimatum to the
county. Th e city’s budget for the fi scal year that
starts July 1 includes 10.5 full-time equivalent
positions, compared with 16.25 in the current
budget.
Whether or not the city submitted the propos-
al, with its outlandish dollar demands, probably
was a moot point.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
The tragedy in Uvalde, and why police
body camera footage should be released
EDITORIAL FROM THE FORT WORTH
STAR-TELEGRAM:
O
ne really disturbing crime is some-
times all it takes to enact change at
any level. The Uvalde shooting has
done that, encouraging new federal gun
legislation and school safety provisions.
It has also revealed the limitations po-
lice hope to place on public release of body
camera footage. The Texas Department of
Public Safety has asked Attorney General
Ken Paxton to prevent the public release
of footage from cameras that law enforce-
ment officers wore during the shooting at
Robb Elementary School, citing one of the
many legal loopholes available to them.
In this case, DPS officials argue, the
footage could be used by other criminals to
find “weaknesses” in how police respond
to crimes.
No offense to the Uvalde ISD police and
others on the scene for more than an hour
while the attack was active, but that ship
has sailed.
Motherboard, a tech publication, filed
public records requests with DPS, Uvalde
city police, the school district, the U.S. De-
partment of Homeland Security and the
Customs and Border Protection agency. It
seeks body camera footage, audio record-
ings, and other relevant information from
that day in order to understand what went
wrong.
It does not take the eye of a criminal in-
vestigator to see that Uvalde police failed
to follow protocol and lacked the tools and
courage necessary to confront an active
shooter and usher dying children to nearby
hospitals so that their lives may have been
saved, even as they prevented parents from
going inside the school themselves.
Over the two weeks following the shoot-
ing, the story law enforcement shared to
the media changed several times. From
whether there was a security guard at the
school to whether a door was propped
open and whether the first responding of-
ficer carried a radio, law enforcement in-
volved in the response have shown they’re
good at one thing: obfuscation.
Body camera footage of active law en-
forcement officers that day wouldn’t tell
the whole story, of course. And it wouldn’t
have to include awful footage of dead or
dying victims. But it would provide an-
swers that law enforcement can’t quite get
straight.
There are legal provisions to prevent
release of the footage, but they should be
sparsely applied on a case-by-case basis.
The loopholes are vast and expansive and
completely thwart the reason for body
cameras in the first place: to promote
transparency and accountability.
Body camera footage often clarifies for
law enforcement and perpetrator what
might seem hazy in the heat of an intense
moment.
According to the Texas Public Informa-
tion Act, “A video of a use of deadly force
by an officer or the investigation of an of-
ficer can not be released to the public until
all criminal and administrative processes
have been completed. A law enforcement
agency may release a video if the agency
determines that release of the video ad-
vances a law enforcement purpose.” Under
these two vague circumstances, both left
up to the powers that be, it’s a miracle any-
one wondering about the fate of their loved
ones in the hands of police officers has
seen body cam footage.
Texas law has provisions about what
footage and other police documents
police departments can withhold. Each
city has its own policies, too. Together,
they form a laundry list of subjective
reasons. Here are some in Fort Worth:
in cases in which no one is charged or
convicted, in cases where footage shows
the inside of a residence, when an inves-
tigation is ongoing or the release could
compromise the investigation, when the
footage might violate someone’s privacy,
if the subject is a juvenile, if the footage
identifies officers’ names or adversely
affects future operations, or when there
is a “dead suspect.”
These, particularly that last reason, al-
lows police the option to withhold video
or documents in far too many cases. Too
many departments are quick to release it
when it proves an officer’s use of force was
justified, but they fight it when it can hold
police accountable.
In light of Uvalde — and future, horrific
crimes — it’s time for the Legislature to in-
crease police transparency when it comes
to body camera footage. Close some of the
loopholes that obfuscate tragedies like this
one.
COLUMN
How we’re betraying many Afghans
BY TRUDY RUBIN
I
t has been almost one year since the
ugly U.S. departure from Kabul. Yet
tens of thousands of Afghans who were
promised special immigrant visas (SIVs)
— meant for those who worked for U.S.
soldiers and civilians — remain trapped
under terrifying Taliban rule.
Even for those eligible for SIVs, it could
take years — if ever — to be issued one,
given the glacial pace of the process.
Hunted by name by the Taliban, many ap-
plicants may be dead or imprisoned long
before their number comes up.
As the United States (rightly) rolls back
bureaucratic red tape to welcome Ukraini-
ans as temporary refugees, it is shameful to
abandon those Afghans to whom we made
promises.
“We left far too many behind,” I was told
by Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a veteran
of the Iraq War, who has been at the fore-
front of pushing for legislation to speed up
the process. “It is taking far too long to save
people who are depending on us.”
Contrary to popular belief, many of the
roughly 120,000 Afghans evacuated from
Kabul Airport during the chaotic U.S. exit
were not those who were promised SIVs.
Large numbers of them were people who
managed to push their way into the airport
or had connections with the U.S. or Af-
ghan military inside the airport.
Other lucky Afghans were rescued by
impromptu operations organized by net-
works of U.S. humanitarian organizations,
journalists and U.S. military veterans,
working to get staff or translators through
Taliban and U.S. military checkpoints and
into the airport.
To recall those desperate days in Au-
gust, I highly recommend the forthcoming
book “The Fifth Act: America’s End in Af-
ghanistan,” due out Aug. 9. Its author, El-
liot Ackerman, a decorated veteran of five
tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was drawn
into one of those rescue networks. He bril-
liantly describes the harrowing rescue ef-
forts, which he ties into the larger tragedy
of the Afghan War.
“Everyone scrambled to get out people
they knew,” Ackerman told me last week,
referring to operations by U.S. veterans.
“The people who got out had the right
contact list on their cellphone,” he added.
“U.S. military veterans were being asked to
play a Schindler’s List game, deciding who
gets help and who gets left behind.”
Betraying the SIV applicants, says Ack-
erman, is a “betrayal of our values. We
could expedite the visa process. But the
administration just wants the SIVs to go
away, allowing infinitesimal numbers in.”
The numbers certainly support that
conclusion.
The State Department estimates as
many as 160,000 Afghan allies along with
immediate family members are eligible for
SIVs, according to a Politico report. The
eligible group — including military trans-
lators, left-behind embassy staff, staff for
USAID projects and techies who helped
U.S. contractors — doesn’t even include
the many thousands more judges, prosecu-
tors, women’s rights activists, and journal-
ists who worked on U.S.-funded projects
but aren’t eligible for SIVs.
Yet State Department flights — which the
Taliban still allow to depart from Kabul Air-
port — evacuate only around 350 Afghans
weekly; all evacuees must have SIV applica-
tions that are in the final stages of process-
ing. They are flown to Doha in Qatar for fi-
nal processing before admission to the U.S.
That leaves untold thousands of Afghans
under severe Taliban threat because they
were closely associated with Americans;
their names are often on electronic em-
ployment lists that the Taliban retrieved.
One example: a family I’ve been trying
to help who is headed by a leading Afghan
judge with stellar credentials and a recom-
mendation by a U.S. general he worked
with. The general’s support has not acceler-
ated his case.
The Taliban is searching for the jurist,
so he and his family are living in hiding,
the children unable to go to school, and
the family fearful even to go outside to
shop for food. Their money is running
out. Three family members are SIV-eligi-
ble, including a women’s rights activist, yet
they are all only at the beginning of the visa
process. The family is in such danger that I
cannot use their names.
Another option that should be available
to the jurist’s family — which is now being
used to expedite the arrival of Ukrainian
refugees — is humanitarian parole status,
which waives normal visa requirements
and allows a temporary stay in the United
States. Under this option, Ukrainians flee-
ing the Russian invasion can remain in the
U.S. for two years if sponsored by relatives
or other U.S. citizens.
“In the Ukrainian case,” I was told by
Adam Bates, a lawyer with the International
Refugees Assistance Program, “the admin-
istration did workarounds to let previously
unknown Ukrainians enter in weeks. Why
not let known Afghans in?” If sponsors
were needed, many U.S. veterans could be
found to host their former Afghan transla-
tors while they waited for SIV approvals.
Yet according to Moulton, of around
45,000 Afghan applications for humanitar-
ian parole, 2,500 have been considered and
denied, and only around 270 conditionally
approved.
The different treatment of Ukrainians
and Afghans can’t be attributed simply to
red tape in processing the latter.
True, there is a pressing need to simplify
the overly complex SIV process, and to in-
crease the number of processing person-
nel, but nothing will truly change without
specific direction from the White House.
“When you look at how fast the
Ukrainian situation was put in operation,”
said Bates, “I don’t know how you can jus-
tify the Afghan situation. There is a lack
of will to get this done coming from the
White House.”
“The Ukrainian situation shows what
happens when the administration is truly
committed to processing admissions,” Bates
said. “Where there is a will, there is a way.”
█
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board
member for the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers
may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box
8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by email at
trubin@phillynews.com.