NEWS
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
HeRMIsTOnHeRaLd.COM • A7
Detective encourages parents to
monitor teens’ smartphone use
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
A
staff photo by Kathy aney
A car drives on East Airport Road on Friday near EOTEC.
Umatilla County seeks to
reduce road project snags
By PHIL WRIGHT
STAFF WRITER
A
fter Airport Road
neighbors voiced
concerns
about
improvements
to
the
road planned by Umatilla
County, the county aims
to hold private, individ-
ual meetings with approxi-
mately 20 property owners
to find ways to mitigate the
effects of improvements
along the Hermiston road.
The property own-
ers, however, will have to
request those meetings.
Owners
along
the
road leading to the front
entrance of the Eastern
Oregon Event and Trade
Center have been building
in the public right-of-way
for decades. The county
surveyed the area last year
for the upcoming project
to widen Airport Road and
build other improvements
and found owners and res-
idents have built as much
as 13 feet onto county
property.
Commissioner George
Murdock, chair of the
county board, said the sit-
uation is common through-
out the county, with some
folks even farming on pub-
lic right-of-ways. Most
people understand the risks
that come with building on
property they don’t own, he
said, and property owners
along Airport Road likely
will have to deal with some
effects of the road project.
The county board of
commissioners in this case
will vote Wednesday morn-
ing in Pendleton to approve
a plan for a commissioner, a
representative of the county
road department, an engi-
neer and “others deemed
necessary” to meet with
individual property owners
adjacent to Airport Road
to discuss those effects and
possible solutions.
Chris Waine is one of
the Airport Road residents.
He also is founder and
frontman for the Hermis-
ton Airport Road Neighbor-
hood Association, which is
pushing the county to hold
a public hearing on the
road improvement project.
Waine questioned why the
county would want to con-
duct individual meetings.
“They know there is a
boundary issue, they know
there is a dispute,” he said.
“Just hold the hearing and
hear what the community
has to say.”
While that might be eas-
ier, Murdock said, it may
not be better. “Everyone in
the room jumping up and
down” during a hearing
would not allow the county
to tailor possible resolu-
tions to meet individual
needs, which could range
from relocating fences to
granting easements for
items encroaching on the
right-of-way.
“There isn’t a great
solution,” Murdock said,
“We have to look at each
individual property, and I
think when this is all said
and done, these individu-
als won’t be as impacted
as some people are
projecting.”
The private meetings
also could allow for more
candid discussions, and
Murdock said as a property
owner he would feel more
comfortable standing on
his own land talking with
a few officials than stand-
ing in a room full of people
and addressing the county
board.
If the board approves the
plan, the individuals have
to ask for the meetings,
and the sessions will not
produce meeting minutes.
Murdock said any deal that
comes out of the meetings,
however, would be public.
The county has no legal
requirement to hold a pub-
lic hearing for the road
project. Waine said he has
talked with the office of
Republican state Rep. Greg
Smith, Heppner, to change
that.
When there are contro-
versies over development
and the lay of the land, he
said, Oregon law should
require public hearings.
Waine contended the
county’s proposal looks
like a formality. He said he
plans to attend the Wednes-
day meeting on behalf of
his neighbors and suggest
the board table the topic.
He said the solution is sim-
ple enough: the county
commissioner could vote to
vacate 13 feet of the south-
ern boundary right-of-way.
Stanfield city manager
Blair Larsen announced he
is leaving for a position in
another city.
The Stanfield city coun-
cil was planning a spe-
cial meeting Tuesday night
after deadline to approve
a plan for recruitment of a
new administrator and an
advertisement for the posi-
tion. The proposed sched-
ule would see finalists
interviewed on July 19.
A draft advertisement
for the position included
in the agenda packet lists
the salary at $65,000 to
$80,000 plus benefits
to manage a staff of 21
employees and an annual
budget of about $3.7 mil-
lion. Stanfield has a popu-
lation of 2,185.
Larsen has served as
Stanfield’s city manager
since May 2013. He has
overseen growth in hous-
ing and new business,
but also controversy over
alleged misconduct in the
police department and the
odor coming from the 3D
IdaPro dehydration plant.
He said Friday that he
“If a girl sends a
sexually explicit
photo to a boy, she
just manufactured
child pornography”
Det. Kasey Ward,
Umatilla County
Sheriff’s Office
He said any minor with
a smartphone or other inter-
net-connected device should
password protect it in case it
gets lost or stolen, but parents
should “absolutely” have the
password and make it a prac-
tice of asking their child to
hand over their phone for
random searches.
It’s important to open
every app, Ward said, as
photos can be hidden under
icons that look like a calcula-
tor or other unassuming app.
And the child should know
that if they’re caught delet-
ing messages or their brows-
ing history their phone will
be confiscated.
If parents have a suspi-
cion that something illegal
is going on, they can sign a
release for the sheriff’s office
to search the phone using a
device that pulls everything
— including deleted pho-
tos and messages — into a
format where detectives can
easily search for keywords
or snapshots of every recent
website visit. Ward said
sometimes parents are very
surprised to find out what
type of pornography their
young son or daughter was
looking at before clearing
their browsing history.
There are parental-control
options on the market that
can notify parents of their
child’s web activity or block
certain sites. Ward said those
can be helpful, but they’re
not fool-proof. Teens today
are incredibly tech-savvy
and they all have friends
with web-connected devices
at school.
“Kids get curious about
sex and the opposite sex and
now they have a device in
their hand where they can
look things up privately,”
he said. “When I was a kid
you had to have a friend with
a dad who had a Playboy
magazine.”
That’s why it’s import-
ant that parents have con-
versations with their chil-
dren, Ward said, about what
they might find online and
how someone might take
advantage of them there.
Ward also encourages par-
ents to have conversations
with their children about
topics such as consent and
the dangers of drinking to
the point of blacking out at a
party. Teens tend to think of
rape as something that hap-
pens “with a stranger grab-
bing you in the parking lot,”
but the vast majority of sex-
ual assaults are perpetrated
by someone known to the
victim.
Ward has seen many local
cases where the perpetra-
tor (and often their parents)
don’t think what they did
was rape or assault, because
the victim was not actively
fighting back. A boy might
have had sex with a half-un-
conscious, intoxicated girl at
a party or offered a girl a ride
home, only to take her some-
where deserted and refuse
to take her back until she
agreed to have sex with him.
“Teens often have no idea
how the laws work and what
applies to them,” he said.
ZTrak™ Residential
Zero-Turn Mowers
MEETING
The Umatilla County
Board of Commission-
ers during its meeting
Wednesday will consid-
er a plan to hold private
meetings with airport
Road property owners
to discuss upcoming
road improvements. The
meeting starts at 9 a.m.
and is room 130 of the
county courthouse, 216
s.e. Fourth st., Pendle-
ton.
The board also will
consider an agreement
to outsource fleet
management and to
purchase reader boards
for the public works
department.
Stanfield city manager leaving
for new city after six years
BY HERMISTON HERALD
smartphone in every
pocket has made it
harder than ever to
keep teens out of trouble.
Umatilla County Sheriff’s
Office Det. Kasey Ward said
a combination of monitor-
ing and education by parents
is crucial to preventing the
kind of cases he sees, rang-
ing from date rape to child
pornography charges related
to sexting.
He described teenagers
sending nude photos and
sexually explicit messages
as an “epidemic.”
“It’s become common,”
he said. “They have the
mindset of ‘everybody does
it now.’”
The consequences can be
grave, however. The “cute
boy” on the other end of the
social media app could actu-
ally be a “50-year-old per-
vert,” Ward said, who could
use the photos to blackmail
the teen into worse things, or
post the pictures on a child
pornography site. He said
when he checks a national
database to find the victims
of images pulled from locals’
phones, sometimes he finds
the photos are up to a decade
old and still circulating.
“Once you put it out there,
once you hit send, there’s no
taking it back, and God only
knows where it will end up,”
he said.
Even if teens are trad-
ing sexually explicit pho-
tos with someone who is
known to them, Ward said
there are plenty of teenage
boys who delight in showing
private nude photos of their
girlfriend to their friends.
He said teens often think
they’re safe sending photos
over apps such as Snapchat,
which ostensibly deletes the
photo after a few seconds,
but it doesn’t prevent people
from taking a screenshot.
At best, Ward said, such
an incident can result in a
loss of reputation. At worst,
the photos could be used as
blackmail after a breakup or
could cause multiple teens
to end up as registered sex
offenders for life.
“If a girl sends a sexually
explicit photo to a boy, she
just manufactured child por-
nography, he just received
it and if he sends it to his
friends he distributed it,”
Ward said.
$
Select Series™
Lawn Tractors
AS LOW AS
62.50 per
month
AS LOW AS
*2
$
month
69 per
*1
Finding the equipment
that’s just right for you:
RDO does that.
The perfect match for your lawn is waiting.
Get the features, performance and cut you want
with our full line of residential lawn equipment.
at RDOequipment.com
HERMISTON | 844-551-5594
Blair Larsen Stanfield City
Manager
was not ready to announce
his new job yet but should
be soon.
*Offer ends July 31, 2019. Subject to approved credit on John Deere Financial Revolving Plan, a service of John Deere Financial, f.s.b.
For Consumer Use only. 0% down payment required. Taxes, freight, setup and delivery charges could increase monthly payment. Other
VSHFLDO UDWHV DQG WHUPV PD\ EH DYDLODEOH LQFOXGLQJ LQVWDOOPHQW ƟQDQFLQJ 5HVWULFWLRQV DSSO\ 6HH SDUWLFLSDWLQJ GHDOHU IRU FRPSOHWH
GHWDLOV0RQWKO\SD\PHQWVDUHEDVHGRQDQDPRXQWƟQDQFHGRIDW$357KHTXRWHGSD\PHQWRISHUPRQWK
ZLOOFUHDWHDQHVWLPDWHGWRWDORISD\PHQWVIRUWKHWUDQVDFWLRQRIDQGDUHSD\PHQWSHULRGRIPRQWKVLIRQO\WKHPLQLPXP
UHTXLUHGSD\PHQWLVPDGH0RQWKO\SD\PHQWVDUHEDVHGRQDQDPRXQWƟQDQFHGRIDW$357KHTXRWHGSD\PHQWRI
SHUPRQWKZLOOFUHDWHDQHVWLPDWHGWRWDORISD\PHQWVIRUWKHWUDQVDFWLRQRIDQGDUHSD\PHQWSHULRGRIPRQWKVLI
only the minimum required payment is made.