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In case you missed them, here are some of the top stories of the weekend:
There’s an old adage in police work: You lie, you die.
When you wear the badge, your word is everything. And rightfully so — law enforcement officers have the power to place someone under arrest and ultimately deprive them of their liberty, considering how their account of events often carries more weight in the eyes of a jury.
The discovery of blatant lies often ends with officers kicked off the force. But what about less serious acts of dishonesty? Or a miscommunication that could be seen as either a mistake or an act of deceit, depending on whom you believe?
Such questions swirl around a list of a dozen officers maintained by the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. It serves as a roster of officers whose testimony in court could be brought into question because of something they’ve done in the past.
It’s called a “Brady List” and the controversy around it has heightened in recent years as guidelines for maintaining the information have expanded.
Officers say that inappropriately placing someone on the list unjustly tarnishes reputations, while defense attorneys say the procedure for maintaining the list involves too much secrecy. The prosecuting attorney, legally charged with maintaining the list, argues that changing the system could have devastating effects on a case and those involved.
WASHOUGAL — About a month into his time working at 3rd Heart Tattoo, Brandon Hozack asked his boss if he remembered when the two first met.
Ryan Boomhower, owner of the Washougal tattoo shop, didn’t. They briefly met three years prior, when Boomhower was working at Painless Ric’s Tattoo in Camas, and Hozack came in to ask about a possible apprenticeship. Hozack, 32, didn’t have an art background, and in the previous year had started teaching himself to draw, paint and tattoo.
Boomhower, 37, took a look at Hozack’s portfolio, which included photos of tattoos he did at home on his wife and a friend, and offered a blunt assessment.
“I really think you should stop,” Hozack remembers Boomhower telling him. He told Hozack to focus only on drawing and come back to the shop in about 10 months.
Hozack didn’t listen. He walked out, muttering some words that can’t be reprinted in a family newspaper, and kept at it.
They laugh about the exchange now, and Hozack admits Boomhower was right.
And they’re thrilled their paths crossed again.
In the midst of the bustling crowd at Fort Vancouver’s Visitor Center, Carol Schafer pored over a display of pipe bowls once owned by soldiers stationed at the Vancouver Barracks.
“They’re like campaign buttons,” Schafer said, pointing to a pair of “president pipes” carved to resemble Presidents Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore during their campaigns in the early 19th century.
As Schafer spoke of what she called an “interesting tidbit” of Vancouver’s history, so too did dozens of others exploring the newly renovated Visitor Center, reopened Saturday after more than a year of construction.
The modern, airy space is the new centerpiece of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Superintendent Tracy Fortmann said. The space will feature rotating exhibits from the fort’s substantial museum collection, which contains more than two million historical artifacts that tell the story of Vancouver and those who settled here.
“Think of it as a tapestry,” Fortmann continued. “All the threads come together.”
Maybe this film needs more Cash, Beth Harrington kept hearing.
It definitely needed more dollars, the Vancouver documentarian already knew. When you’re making a movie about the original royalty of country music, the requisite songs, film clips, photos and other copyrighted materials cost a lot to license. And when you explain that your real focus will be some of the crucial but lesser-known figures in the tale, potential investors start suggesting: “Can you put more Cash in it?”
Johnny Cash, that is.
And there’s some unparalleled Cash in Harrington’s latest movie, “The Winding Stream: The Carters, The Cashes and the Course of Country Music,” since she conducted one of the last interviews with the “Man in Black,” recorded weeks before he died in 2003.
But Harrington wanted to tell a richer, longer, stranger story that included Johnny Cash’s rise to fame within a bigger picture whose real heroes are an astonishingly talented and eccentric Virginia family, the Carters.
“Who cares about that?” is what Harrington said she heard too often. Raising money to make the film took years, and raising the money for the licensing took more years.
“If it weren’t for the people in this community, it wouldn’t have happened,” Harrington said.
Mint Tea, a unique tea shop and bistro restaurant that has been an anchor of Uptown Village since 2008, will close its doors at the end of December.
Owner Jenna Eckert said she has sold the building, a former single-family home at 2014 Main St., as the result of a divorce. Although she has not sold the business, she said she has made no plans to open elsewhere. A Vietnamese couple who live in east Vancouver have bought the building and plan to open a Vietnamese restaurant, she said. Eckert said she intended to remain in the community.
Eckert and her then-husband, Abdul Akdi, first went into business in the neighborhood in 2002. The original store initially was filled with imported Moroccan rugs, lanterns, furniture and drums from Morocco, Akdi’s place of birth. Their move to the present location allowed Eckert to fulfill her dream of opening a cafe.
“It isn’t what I anticipated. It isn’t what I wanted,” Eckert said of the upcoming closure of the tea house. “We had 13 great years. We loved this vibrant community and I loved being a part of it.”
