More then 20 people crowded around a cul-de-sac just northeast of the planned Sorenson Neighborhood Park Sunday evening, watching Clark County Deputy Bob Carder try to calm a property owner who came home to find someone else’s house parked on his vacant lot next door.
A developer had used his property as a thoroughfare to move in an old house to a nearby property. The angry property owner had called Carder to resolve the matter. When the developer arrived on the scene, Carder played mediator, helping them settle on a $4,500 fee for access to the property. They narrowly avoided the court system, in which Carder said only the attorneys would win.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Carder said during a four-hour ride along Sunday. This incident was just a snapshot of a typical night on his beat in Salmon Creek and Felida.
Carder and Deputy Michael Johnson spend much of their time communicating with neighbors and preventing the already safe Salmon Creek and Felida streets from succumbing to what law enforcement sometimes calls the “broken window theory” that can start the downward spiral into increasing crime.
“Burglars look for places that are dark and unkempt, because they don’t want to use more effort than necessary,” Johnson said in a separate interview. “They look for places where it’s easy to get away with things.”
Highway 99 Hot Spot
Although Carder and Johnson have beats west of the highway, they spend a lot of time assisting Deputy Albin Boyes on the other side of Interstate 5, where more businesses, traffic and unkempt, higher-density housing means more attention from the sheriffs (see the April 24 story “Trouble spots for county cops.“)
“The management is the key to dealing with these people,” Carder said after pulling out of Callaham’s Mobile Estates, one of the identified trouble areas that caters to people on Section 8 housing vouchers. He said the trouble starts when the property owners get their money back leave the locations in relative disrepair.
Salmon Creek and Felida don’t contain much high-density housing. The few complexes around are new, still well kept and often have their own security teams.
Recession Issues
Since the recession started in 2008, Carder said he’s noticed, in general, increasing numbers of homeless and people with mental disabilities. Carder said people who check themselves in for treatment at places like Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center often check themselves out, while still a danger to themselves and others.
“There’s really no place for us to put them,” he said while driving past a panhandler on Interstate 5’s off-ramp at 134th Street. “We just don’t have those abilities anymore – the resources.”
Sheriffs can place medical holds on people in danger, but have few open spaces in longer-term care facilities. There are no laws against the daily panhandling at the confluence of Interstates 5 and 205, and the lack of housing and care centers mean a revolving door, Carder said.
Car Prowling
While parked off of 134th Street, taking down notes on a woman whose son’s backpack was taken out of her Volkswagen Tuareg, Carder said one of his pet peeves is people leaving valuables in their cars.
Carder said people should take their valuables indoors with them. Cars are not safe storage areas.
Another of his pet peeves is when people don’t record the serial numbers on their pricier belongings. Without that identification, there’s little possibility of ever recovering lost items. Much of what Carder and Johnson said they do is teaching people how to avoid becoming victims.
Community Outreach
Carder acts as a deputy liaison to the Felida Neighborhood Association; Johnson is with Sherwood Hills. They said those relationships are fairly strong and essential to keeping the community safe.
Carder said he and Johnson are the only officers covering covering Salmon Creek and Felida, an area of more than 20,000 people.
“We’re really just putting Band-Aids on stuff,” he said.
Neighbors help fill in the gaps. The associations often act as some of the main information sources for their communities. They also help coordinate neighborhood watches and Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT).
“That is the most effective way for us to communicate or alert,” said Milada Allen of Felida’s association in an interview two weeks ago. “Make those block captains part of your CERT.”
Perceived Crime
Near the end of the ride-along, Carder drove east on 117th Street between Klineline Pond and Vancouver Treatment Solution’s methadone clinic. When asked about the perception that the clinic would bring crime to the neighborhood, Carder said that it didn’t have any negative effect. He also said that if you compare the call volume with the attendance at the pond, it’s not a very active area with the sheriff’s department.
Carder ended his Sunday shift back at the Clark County Sheriff’s West Precinct. He said that overall, Salmon Creek and Felida are some of the more well-kept neighborhoods with active community involvement.
