Chief
11-28-2007, 02:03 PM
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Letter to the Editor:
Having just returned from the Netherlands where Light Rail, Trams and Trolleys are plentiful, I Couldn’t help but notice that most of the Trains, Trams and Trolleys were for the most part running over the tracks without enough passengers to pay the Conductors Salary and Auto Traffic was so heavy that it was hazardous to attempt to cross a street on foot.
Now couple that with the what is happening with the “MAX – Light Rail Crime Wave in Portland and you have just got to wonder what the Crossing Study Group was thinking or smoking, when they announced that they are going to recommend putting light rail (the Gravy Train) on a Multi Billion Dollar Bridge, that we don’t need and will do nothing to solve Multi I-5 Bottle Neck problems.
I think the Vancouver’s Mayor and his Gang of 5 are going a little too far when their Portland Envy includes spending billions of our hard earned tax dollars to make it easier for those fueling Portland Light Rail Crime Wave to visit Vancouver easier.
We currently don’t have enough police/money to curtail our gang activities what will we do when Portland’s group rides the Gravy Train to Vancouver.
L. M. Patella
CDR USN (ret)
P.S. Read below what the columbian isn’t telling you.
Fear rides the MAX
Gresham attack sparks widespread outrage and plans for a safety forum
BY JIM REDDEN
The Portland Tribune, Nov 9, 2007, Updated Nov 9, 2007 (81 Reader comments)
Bryce Jacobson used to be a light-rail booster.
Jacobson is a solid waste and recycling planner at Metro, the regional government charged with managing growth in most of the tricounty area. Until recently, he saw TriMet’s MAX light-rail system as a valuable tool to reducing traffic congestion and moving people around the metropolitan region.
But now Jacobson says MAX has become a transportation system for criminals.
“Except during the peak rush hours, MAX is little more than a way for the criminal element to move from one crime scene to another,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson said he began losing faith in MAX long before last Saturday’s baseball bat attack by a 15-year-old suspected gang member on an elderly man at the Gresham Central MAX station. The beating left Laurie Lee Chilcote, 71, hospitalized with extensive head injuries at Oregon Health & Science University.
His accused attacker, Abel Antonio Chavez-Garcia, was arrested by Gresham police on charges of first-degree assault, attempted murder and first-degree criminal mischief. The case is scheduled to be considered by a Multnomah County grand jury today.
“I used to say MAX was one of the best things for maintaining the environment, but it has been circling the drain for years,” said Jacobson, who bases his opinion on the crimes and rude behavior he sees riding the line between his home in the Hollywood neighborhood and the station at the Oregon Convention Center near his job almost every day.
“Fights, drug dealing, loud arguments, you name it,” he said.
Jacobson is far from alone in his feelings. The day before the attack, Gresham Mayor Shane Bemis announced that local police will begin patrolling the MAX light-rail line through the city.
In a Nov. 2 letter to TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen, Bemis wrote, “Accounts of public intoxication, gang activity, assault, harassment, and drug activity — not to mention fare avoidance — are prevalent.”
The announcement was met with enthusiastic support from Gresham residents. Calls, letters and e-mails backing the decision poured into Bemis’ office, including many from people who said they were afraid to ride MAX — or had stopped using it altogether.
Saturday’s beating provoked an even greater outcry on local media and civic-oriented Web sites. Many of the postings accused TriMet of ignoring the problem and not even enforcing its fare policies. The comments came regarding the entire light-rail system, including Washington County.
Hansen responded by promising to increase enforcement and calling for a safety summit involving all the governments in all the cities and counties served by MAX. It could happen as early as the last week in November.
“I’m all for it,” Bemis said. “MAX is a tremendous community asset that is not living up to its full potential because people are afraid to ride it.”
More lines are on the way
The controversy is erupting as MAX is being tapped to play a larger role in the future of the Portland metropolitan area.
A light-rail line from Gateway south to Clackamas County is under construction. When completed, it will connect the Clackamas Town Center to downtown and the rest of the light-rail system.
After that, a new line from downtown Portland to Milwaukie is being planned. And yet another line connection to Vancouver, Wash., over a new Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River, is being studied.
The Gresham developments already are raising safety questions among people involved in the coming lines.
For example, crime along the MAX line was a major topic of discussion at a regularly scheduled Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Milwaukie Light Rail Safety and Security Task Force.
“If I had an old-fashioned telephone switchboard, it would have been lit up like a Christmas tree today” with calls on TriMet crime and the implications for Milwaukie,” said committee Vice Chairman Ed Zumwalt. “Someone is going to have to step up and protect the city.”
Milwaukie Mayor James Bernard said he shared Zumwalt’s concerns.
“I told TriMet if our police chief isn’t satisfied I’m not endorsing the plan,” Bernard said. “If the chief is satisfied, I’m going to be satisfied, and until he’s satisfied, I’m not going to be satisfied.”
TriMet officials long have conceded that crimes occur along their lines but have insisted they affect a relatively small number of riders — far fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of all boardings over the past eight years.
Sam Adams, Portland’s transportation commissioner, said TriMet officials have been working to address the crime problem. He notes that in recent years, the agency has added lighting and cameras to several stations that feel isolated because of the way they are designed.
The stations include the one at Northeast 82nd Avenue, which lies below street level and has only one way in and out. Not counting minor offenses such as fare evasion and smoking, 62 crimes were reported there in 2005 and 2006, including 10 aggravated assaults.
“They’ve been working to make things better,” Adams said.
Studies show MAX is factor
Gresham officials often have questioned whether TriMet’s statistics were telling the whole story, however. Bemis said he has repeatedly heard from people who are afraid to ride MAX — far more people than such low crime rates would seem to justify.
“The bottom line is that this is more of an issue than simply perception,” Bemis said.
When Bemis became mayor in January, he convened a safety summit to look at crime problems in Gresham, including those along the MAX line.
It led to an analysis of crime statistics that showed that a high percentage of all crimes reported in Gresham occurred within a quarter of a mile of the line — including just over 60 percent of all gang calls.
Then, after a series of disturbances over the summer at the Northeast 162nd Avenue station, Bemis asked the police to identify where people causing those problems lived.
The results, released in a Nov. 6 memo to Bemis and the Gresham City Council, showed that fewer than half lived in Gresham. The largest block of nonresidents — 33 percent — live in the area of Portland patrolled by East Precinct police officers.
“A majority of these were being caused by people who don’t live in Gresham,” Bemis said. “You have to ask what role MAX is playing in all this.”
The Portland Police Bureau has not conducted a similar analysis.
Summit will address issue
The question of whether and how the MAX line contributes to crime will feature prominently in the safety summit TriMet is organizing. So will the adequacy of the agency’s current security system — a system that has evolved over the years in response to changing political situations.
Like the Port of Portland, TriMet is a municipal corporation created by the Oregon Legislature and overseen by a board of directors appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.
Originally, TriMet had its own police department, called the Transit District Police Department. Its officers were state-certified police who worked directly for TriMet. Then when gangs became an issue in the 1980s, some Oregon State Police troopers were assigned to it.
After that, it was reorganized to include members of other law enforcement in the region, following recommendations prepared for TriMet by Don Clark, a former Multnomah County sheriff and chairman of the board of commissioners.
Now it has been reorganized again as a division of the Portland Police Bureau along the lines of a multijurisdictional task force.
Called the Transit Police Division, the unit is headed by a Portland police captain who reports to both a bureau commander and the head of TriMet’s security department.
It includes 36 other employees from the law enforcement agencies of the jurisdictions within TriMet’s boundaries.
In addition to the Portland bureau, they are the Beaverton Police Department, the Gresham Police Department, the Tigard Police Department, the Milwaukie Police Department, the Multnomah County sheriff’s office and a deputy Multnomah County district attorney.
The Hillsboro Police Department is not part of the division but has its own unit assigned to patrol MAX.
TriMet pays the salaries of all the members of the unit. They are authorized to work anywhere within the transit system and so frequently are working outside their individual agency’s jurisdiction.
TriMet also contracts with the Wackenhut private security company for additional presence at some locations. The current $6.8 million budget is set to increase to $7.4 million next year.
Bemis already has decided that Gresham needs more police patrols along the MAX line than TriMet currently provides.
During a Wednesday news conference to launch the enhanced patrols, he noted that the transit police issued fewer than one skipped-fare citation a day last year in Gresham.
“Now, I’m a trusting guy, but I’ve got to think there are a few more people than that taking free rides on the MAX,” he said.
Victim is ‘Grandpa Laurie’
Whatever the results of the safety summit, they will come too late for Chilcote. The assault on him has become a touchstone of anger and outrage among citizens who feel that violence on and around the MAX line has gone on long enough.
One reason the attack struck such a chord is Chilcote is well-known as a volunteer at the Police Activities League’s Learning Center in Gresham, where schoolchildren he mentors call him Grandpa Laurie.
“He’s there pretty much five days a week,” said Maura White-Cioeta, president of PAL of Greater Portland. “He’s an amazing volunteer.”
White-Cioeta finds it ironic that Chilcote, a man dedicated to protecting young people, would end up a victim of juvenile violence.
“He probably said, ‘You’ve got to get back in that crosswalk. You’ve got to be safe,’ ” she said after talking with Chilcote’s sister, Caren Topliff. “He’s the first guy to make sure our kids get safely on the MAX train.”
White-Cioeta said Topliff has set up a fund to help defray Chilcote’s health care costs. Donations may be deposited at any Wells Fargo bank branch.
“He will bounce back,” she said. “He’s a very resilient man. Like all people with a heart that good, he will come up with some reason this happened to him. And he’ll make lemonade out of lemons.”
Shannon O. Wells of The Gresham Outlook contributed to this story.
jimredden@portlandtribune.com
Letter to the Editor:
Having just returned from the Netherlands where Light Rail, Trams and Trolleys are plentiful, I Couldn’t help but notice that most of the Trains, Trams and Trolleys were for the most part running over the tracks without enough passengers to pay the Conductors Salary and Auto Traffic was so heavy that it was hazardous to attempt to cross a street on foot.
Now couple that with the what is happening with the “MAX – Light Rail Crime Wave in Portland and you have just got to wonder what the Crossing Study Group was thinking or smoking, when they announced that they are going to recommend putting light rail (the Gravy Train) on a Multi Billion Dollar Bridge, that we don’t need and will do nothing to solve Multi I-5 Bottle Neck problems.
I think the Vancouver’s Mayor and his Gang of 5 are going a little too far when their Portland Envy includes spending billions of our hard earned tax dollars to make it easier for those fueling Portland Light Rail Crime Wave to visit Vancouver easier.
We currently don’t have enough police/money to curtail our gang activities what will we do when Portland’s group rides the Gravy Train to Vancouver.
L. M. Patella
CDR USN (ret)
P.S. Read below what the columbian isn’t telling you.
Fear rides the MAX
Gresham attack sparks widespread outrage and plans for a safety forum
BY JIM REDDEN
The Portland Tribune, Nov 9, 2007, Updated Nov 9, 2007 (81 Reader comments)
Bryce Jacobson used to be a light-rail booster.
Jacobson is a solid waste and recycling planner at Metro, the regional government charged with managing growth in most of the tricounty area. Until recently, he saw TriMet’s MAX light-rail system as a valuable tool to reducing traffic congestion and moving people around the metropolitan region.
But now Jacobson says MAX has become a transportation system for criminals.
“Except during the peak rush hours, MAX is little more than a way for the criminal element to move from one crime scene to another,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson said he began losing faith in MAX long before last Saturday’s baseball bat attack by a 15-year-old suspected gang member on an elderly man at the Gresham Central MAX station. The beating left Laurie Lee Chilcote, 71, hospitalized with extensive head injuries at Oregon Health & Science University.
His accused attacker, Abel Antonio Chavez-Garcia, was arrested by Gresham police on charges of first-degree assault, attempted murder and first-degree criminal mischief. The case is scheduled to be considered by a Multnomah County grand jury today.
“I used to say MAX was one of the best things for maintaining the environment, but it has been circling the drain for years,” said Jacobson, who bases his opinion on the crimes and rude behavior he sees riding the line between his home in the Hollywood neighborhood and the station at the Oregon Convention Center near his job almost every day.
“Fights, drug dealing, loud arguments, you name it,” he said.
Jacobson is far from alone in his feelings. The day before the attack, Gresham Mayor Shane Bemis announced that local police will begin patrolling the MAX light-rail line through the city.
In a Nov. 2 letter to TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen, Bemis wrote, “Accounts of public intoxication, gang activity, assault, harassment, and drug activity — not to mention fare avoidance — are prevalent.”
The announcement was met with enthusiastic support from Gresham residents. Calls, letters and e-mails backing the decision poured into Bemis’ office, including many from people who said they were afraid to ride MAX — or had stopped using it altogether.
Saturday’s beating provoked an even greater outcry on local media and civic-oriented Web sites. Many of the postings accused TriMet of ignoring the problem and not even enforcing its fare policies. The comments came regarding the entire light-rail system, including Washington County.
Hansen responded by promising to increase enforcement and calling for a safety summit involving all the governments in all the cities and counties served by MAX. It could happen as early as the last week in November.
“I’m all for it,” Bemis said. “MAX is a tremendous community asset that is not living up to its full potential because people are afraid to ride it.”
More lines are on the way
The controversy is erupting as MAX is being tapped to play a larger role in the future of the Portland metropolitan area.
A light-rail line from Gateway south to Clackamas County is under construction. When completed, it will connect the Clackamas Town Center to downtown and the rest of the light-rail system.
After that, a new line from downtown Portland to Milwaukie is being planned. And yet another line connection to Vancouver, Wash., over a new Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River, is being studied.
The Gresham developments already are raising safety questions among people involved in the coming lines.
For example, crime along the MAX line was a major topic of discussion at a regularly scheduled Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Milwaukie Light Rail Safety and Security Task Force.
“If I had an old-fashioned telephone switchboard, it would have been lit up like a Christmas tree today” with calls on TriMet crime and the implications for Milwaukie,” said committee Vice Chairman Ed Zumwalt. “Someone is going to have to step up and protect the city.”
Milwaukie Mayor James Bernard said he shared Zumwalt’s concerns.
“I told TriMet if our police chief isn’t satisfied I’m not endorsing the plan,” Bernard said. “If the chief is satisfied, I’m going to be satisfied, and until he’s satisfied, I’m not going to be satisfied.”
TriMet officials long have conceded that crimes occur along their lines but have insisted they affect a relatively small number of riders — far fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of all boardings over the past eight years.
Sam Adams, Portland’s transportation commissioner, said TriMet officials have been working to address the crime problem. He notes that in recent years, the agency has added lighting and cameras to several stations that feel isolated because of the way they are designed.
The stations include the one at Northeast 82nd Avenue, which lies below street level and has only one way in and out. Not counting minor offenses such as fare evasion and smoking, 62 crimes were reported there in 2005 and 2006, including 10 aggravated assaults.
“They’ve been working to make things better,” Adams said.
Studies show MAX is factor
Gresham officials often have questioned whether TriMet’s statistics were telling the whole story, however. Bemis said he has repeatedly heard from people who are afraid to ride MAX — far more people than such low crime rates would seem to justify.
“The bottom line is that this is more of an issue than simply perception,” Bemis said.
When Bemis became mayor in January, he convened a safety summit to look at crime problems in Gresham, including those along the MAX line.
It led to an analysis of crime statistics that showed that a high percentage of all crimes reported in Gresham occurred within a quarter of a mile of the line — including just over 60 percent of all gang calls.
Then, after a series of disturbances over the summer at the Northeast 162nd Avenue station, Bemis asked the police to identify where people causing those problems lived.
The results, released in a Nov. 6 memo to Bemis and the Gresham City Council, showed that fewer than half lived in Gresham. The largest block of nonresidents — 33 percent — live in the area of Portland patrolled by East Precinct police officers.
“A majority of these were being caused by people who don’t live in Gresham,” Bemis said. “You have to ask what role MAX is playing in all this.”
The Portland Police Bureau has not conducted a similar analysis.
Summit will address issue
The question of whether and how the MAX line contributes to crime will feature prominently in the safety summit TriMet is organizing. So will the adequacy of the agency’s current security system — a system that has evolved over the years in response to changing political situations.
Like the Port of Portland, TriMet is a municipal corporation created by the Oregon Legislature and overseen by a board of directors appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.
Originally, TriMet had its own police department, called the Transit District Police Department. Its officers were state-certified police who worked directly for TriMet. Then when gangs became an issue in the 1980s, some Oregon State Police troopers were assigned to it.
After that, it was reorganized to include members of other law enforcement in the region, following recommendations prepared for TriMet by Don Clark, a former Multnomah County sheriff and chairman of the board of commissioners.
Now it has been reorganized again as a division of the Portland Police Bureau along the lines of a multijurisdictional task force.
Called the Transit Police Division, the unit is headed by a Portland police captain who reports to both a bureau commander and the head of TriMet’s security department.
It includes 36 other employees from the law enforcement agencies of the jurisdictions within TriMet’s boundaries.
In addition to the Portland bureau, they are the Beaverton Police Department, the Gresham Police Department, the Tigard Police Department, the Milwaukie Police Department, the Multnomah County sheriff’s office and a deputy Multnomah County district attorney.
The Hillsboro Police Department is not part of the division but has its own unit assigned to patrol MAX.
TriMet pays the salaries of all the members of the unit. They are authorized to work anywhere within the transit system and so frequently are working outside their individual agency’s jurisdiction.
TriMet also contracts with the Wackenhut private security company for additional presence at some locations. The current $6.8 million budget is set to increase to $7.4 million next year.
Bemis already has decided that Gresham needs more police patrols along the MAX line than TriMet currently provides.
During a Wednesday news conference to launch the enhanced patrols, he noted that the transit police issued fewer than one skipped-fare citation a day last year in Gresham.
“Now, I’m a trusting guy, but I’ve got to think there are a few more people than that taking free rides on the MAX,” he said.
Victim is ‘Grandpa Laurie’
Whatever the results of the safety summit, they will come too late for Chilcote. The assault on him has become a touchstone of anger and outrage among citizens who feel that violence on and around the MAX line has gone on long enough.
One reason the attack struck such a chord is Chilcote is well-known as a volunteer at the Police Activities League’s Learning Center in Gresham, where schoolchildren he mentors call him Grandpa Laurie.
“He’s there pretty much five days a week,” said Maura White-Cioeta, president of PAL of Greater Portland. “He’s an amazing volunteer.”
White-Cioeta finds it ironic that Chilcote, a man dedicated to protecting young people, would end up a victim of juvenile violence.
“He probably said, ‘You’ve got to get back in that crosswalk. You’ve got to be safe,’ ” she said after talking with Chilcote’s sister, Caren Topliff. “He’s the first guy to make sure our kids get safely on the MAX train.”
White-Cioeta said Topliff has set up a fund to help defray Chilcote’s health care costs. Donations may be deposited at any Wells Fargo bank branch.
“He will bounce back,” she said. “He’s a very resilient man. Like all people with a heart that good, he will come up with some reason this happened to him. And he’ll make lemonade out of lemons.”
Shannon O. Wells of The Gresham Outlook contributed to this story.
jimredden@portlandtribune.com