BPD, hiring, and previous marijuana use

Chief Steve Mylett says it’s been a huge project since he was hired back in 2015, when they were short 21 officers. At the peak of the shortage, BPD was down 23 officers. The department has hired up to 20 officers a year to make up for cops moving or retiring, to the point that the chief says more than half of officers currently on patrol were hired during his tenure.

“When you have a hole — a vacancy in the department — that’s work that’s not being done. And when you multiply that by the numbers that we had, that’s a significant deficit. The officers that maintained employment here stepped up their game. So the citizens didn’t see a decline of services. But the officers stepped up their workload.”

Chief Mylett says the shortage didn’t hurt investigations of major crimes like murder, but affected quality of life issues. The department had to shift officers from their bike unit and motorcycle division, and even detectives into patrol cars to respond to the most pressing crimes. That means spending less time with the public, less time on each call, and less time doing proactive policing.

“With the bicycle patrol specifically, they’re able to be very mobile, they’re able to get out to places where a patrol car can’t,” he said. “And, on top of that, they’re able to interact with pedestrians because they’re not behind the steering wheel of a car going by at 20 miles an hour. When we have our bike unit adequately staffed, we’re seeing more proactive arrests with drug problems, quality of life issues. There’s just an overall presence people feel when they seen an overall police officer and they’re able to interact with them.”

To close the gap, Chief Mylett said, a few strategies worked well for them.

• Every officer as a recruiter — many people were hired after line officers pitched their own contacts on the departments.
• Boosting recruiting staff — hiring a dedicated staffer with a background in baseball recruiting, and dedicating more staff to process applications and background checks.
• Offering a $16,000 signing bonus for lateral hires.

But Mylett said they would not have been nearly as successful if Bellevue weren’t a great place to live and be a police officer.

“We work in a very supportive community,” he said. “Our approval rating from the residents and businesses in Bellevue is always in the high 90th percentile. The relationship that we have from the public is something special. Our elected officials support first responders — and all city employees — better than any city I’ve ever worked in. There’s financial support, there’s moral support, and there’s support for our operations.”

According to the (WASPC), the officer shortage isn’t just Bellevue’s problem. It’s considered a long term issue nationwide because there isn’t enough new blood to replace officers who retire. The WASPC doesn’t have precise numbers, but confirm contextually that nearly every department in Washington is short a number of officers.

Both Chief Mylett and the WASPC say a series of high-profile officer-involved shootings have shaken trust in law enforcement. Combined with a good economy that gives potential applicants a wide range of choices, the appeal of law enforcement as a career has soured over several years.

Bellevue’s skateboarding police officer

The Bellevue Police Department has worked to regain community trust by launching more advisory councils — meetings where groups representing the Muslim community, and LGBTQIA community, among others, can meet directly with police, ask questions and address concerns. The department has even brought in guest speakers to educate officers on cultural differences that might help them with outreach in those communities.

Chief Mylett says working on those underlying problems helps recruit new officers, and helps the department solve crimes. Better relationships leads to more confidence in the department, he says, and a better likelihood people will report crimes and reach out to officers with tips. It also means more professional interest in the department. Increasing diversity has been a major priority for Chief Mylett.

While the Bellevue Police Department doesn’t have any openings for officers right now, they are still hiring. They have eight openings for civilians. They’re also always looking for volunteers to help with their community policing mission.

Listen to Bellevue Police Chief Steve Mylett, and Steve Strachan with the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, discuss staffing challenges.

It’s a processing facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Northwest, housing more than 1,300 men and women as they go through deportation proceedings.

Vu Nguyen lived there while fighting his deportation case. He shared his experience to provide context after ICE offered journalists a tour this week – the first of its kind in Washington state.

Nguyen’s individual experience seemed to support much of what reporters observed: a clean, organized, professional facility – at the end of the day, a jail. But his experience is just one of many.

“The first time I go in there, I just wait for a month and a half to go to court. Then after a month and a half I go to court and they deny me,” said Nguyen of his petition to stay in the United States. “You know, it takes a long, long wait in there.”

Nguyen is originally from Vietnam and got his green card for legal permanent residency when he moved to the United States 19 years ago. The 38-year-old has called Thurston County his home for most of that time.

Nguyen admits he’s had many run-ins with the law. Court records show his criminal history stretches back to at least 2008, and includes assaults and domestic violence. When he pleaded guilty to another felony in December of 2015, ICE got involved.

Life behind bars

After spending 30 days in Thurston County’s jail, Nguyen was re-arrested and ordered deported.

For the next four years, he called ICE detention centers home. ICE statistics show the average time spent at that facility is just 73 days. About 35 percent of the people there have been targeted for arrest by ICE because of their criminal backgrounds.

“They transfer me everywhere,” Nguyen said. “I go to Louisiana, Alabama, they transfer me back to Washington, then I go to Arizona – everywhere. They don’t let you stay one spot.”

According to ICE, “Custody determinations are made on a case-by-case basis. Many factors go into this determination but they are often based on bed space allocation, necessary medical care, and distance to a support system.”

Detainees can also be moved to be closer to family, court hearings, or to facilities with different healthcare specialties. For example, California’s main processing center has strong psychiatric support, according to ICE.

The look and feel, though, was the same most places, according to Nguyen.

“Being there looked like the county jail,” Nguyen said. “Everybody in, like, a dorm. Sometimes we live in there together, sometimes we fight, you know, all kinds of stuff.”

Fights were common.

“The guards have to keep an eye on you because sometimes we fight,” Nguyen said. “Because a lot of people are crazy in there. Sometimes they fight for no reason.”

But it wasn’t scary for him.

“I have to be there be there to fight for my green card,” Nguyen said, matter-of-factly.

For years, immigration advocates have highlighted a laundry list of poor conditions, including delayed and deficient health care, and abuses by guards, along with sparse and spoiled food. Earlier in the week, activists heard from detainees who said they found maggots in their food.

Not a Michelin-star experience

“Some places the food’s good, some places the food’s bad,” Nguyen said. “When I stay in Alabama, the food’s very bad. They feed you beans every day and they don’t feed you meat a lot. I stayed Alabama three years.”

In Tacoma, he said, the food was “alright.” The private company running that facility works with dietitians to come up with meal plans that total 3,000 calories a day. But, Nguyen still preferred making his own meals when he could scrape together enough money through work details to buy food from the commissary.

“They feed you all the same on the menu every week,” said Nguyen. It was bland, he said, but he never had to eat spoiled food. “Sometimes I see a lot of people eat the cornbread, it’s too hard – because they overcook something. They complain about it.”

During the years he was detained, Nguyen interacted with many guards. Some were better than others, but he believes they were fair overall.

“I was in there for four years,” Nguyen said. “I know all the rules. If you keep the rules and you do your own thing, nobody’s going to touch you or do something bad to you. It’s their job, they have to protect you. They’re not supposed to abuse you. Only, you do something wrong, you have to accept what you do.”

He did encounter racism, he said. And there were guards who weren’t responsive to detainees’ needs. In his experience, though, abuses were not widespread.

Solitary confinement

“Depends on you,”Nguyen said. “If you do something wrong in there, they’re gonna put you in separation. And they keep you in there for a while. If you don’t do nothing, they treat you good. You can do your own thing.”

Separation is also known as solitary confinement. Nguyen was caught with contraband and was kept in solitary confinement for about five days as punishment.

“Something you do wrong, you have to accept what you do,” Nguyen concluded.

Advocates have accused ICE of using isolation to retaliate against and subdue organized protests by detainees, like hunger strikes.

Hunger strikes, Nguyen said, were common.

“A lot of Cuban people. They say ICE doesn’t release them,” Nguyen recalled. “They said the country don’t accept them and ICE have to release them. I see a lot of people do hunger strikes, a week or two weeks.”

Nguyen did get released. He won his appeal and regained permanent residency. Now he’s celebrating with a trip to Las Vegas.

Seattle Field Operations Director Nathalie Asher invited media for a tour of the facility, she says, to dispel rumors about what they do. She sees this summer as an ugly turning point in the immigration debate. A protester showed up at their doorstep in Tacoma in July and tried to firebomb the facility. He was fatally shot by Tacoma police officers.

Asher says workers at the facility have also been targeted.

Man sent manifesto before he was killed at detention center: ‘i am antifa’

“People are receiving postcards in mail from organizations who don’t care for our mission, to tell them ‘we know where you work and we’re watching what you’re doing,'” Asher said. “We have employees that are sort of encountered as they’re trying to leave the premises. These are just individuals who come to work every day. They do, you know, what is asked of them. And those are the types of things — the public safety issues — just the mis-perception to the community, is so imperative that we re-calibrate and fix.”

Asher oversees the privately-run center and has spent many years of her career there, moving up through the ranks.

What is the Northwest Detention Center?

Also called the Northwest ICE Processing Center, it was opened in 2004 and is privately owned and operated by the GEO Group, a government contractor. ICE oversees and inspects the facility regularly.

According to fact sheets provided during the tour, it can house 1,575 men and women — no children — and was at about 85 percent capacity at the time.

Asher says this is not the same kind of facility often described in wrenching, where people are crowded and sleeping in tents or surrounded by chainlink fences.

“Those are Border Patrol holding,” Asher said. “They were never designed for long-term detention. Right? They were just designed to be processed and then released while they await their proceedings, or transferred to ICE custody.”

Approximately 65 percent of the population in the Northwest Detention Center has a “non-criminal” background; they were detained at the southern border and transferred to Washington to await the outcome of their immigration cases. About 30 percent of those detainees, according to Asher, are from Mexico, the next largest group is from India, and then the “northern triangle” of Central America.

It appeared some preparations had been made for a media tour when journalists were guided through the facility this week. I could smell fresh paint in some of the hallways. Most of the men looked like they had fresh haircuts. The facility was clean, organized, and quiet.

The tour was pre-planned and limited. Reporters were not allowed to speak with detainees or staff, only look at conditions inside. It wasn’t to debate immigration law or policy. The tour of the Northwest Detention Center should not be seen as a blanket statement about conditions elsewhere.

Intake process

Detainees are first processed and screened for criminal background and gang affiliations, which helps sort them into housing. Every person goes through an initial health screening.

“They get that immediate medical screening,” Asher said. “Women, as they are all coming in, they are all taking a pregnancy test. On the occasion, someone doesn’t know they’re pregnant until we tell them. So, you know, on the occasion that can happen.”

Written guidelines say detainees dictate a schedule for medical care at 12, 24, and 72 hours after booking, then a “comprehensive” health assessment in 14 days. There are more guidelines for psychiatric patients, dental, and vision care.

Healthcare at the facility . But with 80 medical professionals assigned to the Northwest ICE Processing Center, Asher argues that detainees have some of the best care in the country when compared to similar facilities.

“For so many of these individuals, they don’t even know what good vision is,” she said. “For so many of them that have never had an eye exam. We issue glasses here. Sometimes people forget their glasses and while they’re waiting for the prescription we try to find glasses so they can see.”

Asher notes that caring for detainees has gotten tougher under Washington’s sanctuary state laws, which have barred ICE from working with certain public healthcare facilities, like psychiatric hospitals.

After initial intake, detainees are issued essentials like clothing, shoes, a bedroll, and hygiene products. They also get color-coded sweats they are required to wear when out of their living “pods.”

“They have uniforms assigned to them by classification level,” Asher said. “From the blue to the red, these are assigned to the males. Blue, being lowest — these are your non-criminals. For example, this would be an individual who, perhaps, was a southwest border-crosser. A non-criminal seeking asylum, as an example. The next level is green, then we have individuals who have a mid-level criminal history — orange — and then red is aggravated felons, the real bad guys, the gangs and whatnot.”

Women wear yellow, for non-criminal, and pink for high-threat detainees.

The GEO Group, which runs the facility, says it provides an orientation and a detainee handbook. A copy handed out to journalists is 39 pages long and addresses everything from telephone access to procedures for reporting sexual assaults.

The visitation area is small. Detainees and visitors communicate through phones, separated by thick glass.

There’s also a law library, which detainees can visit for an hour a day. When they first arrive, they’re given an orientation by non-governmental organizations that partner with the detention center. The library itself has a bank of desks and computers updated every three months with the latest Lexis Nexis law files. It was packed when the press tour moved through.

The hallways are referred to as a “gray mile.” They lead to the kitchen. The food has been another point of protest. Many detainees have gone on hunger strikes to protest poor food. Activists at the door told us they’d heard from detainees who’d found maggots in their meals.

Asher says she hasn’t heard reports of maggots. She says meal plans are written by dietitians and designed to provide 3,000 calories a day. The facility doesn’t serve pork, and provides kosher and halal options — meals prepared according to Islamic law.

There is also an industrial laundry room. And a barber room — hair cuts are given by volunteer inmates every 30 days, upon request.

Male pod living area

Detainees are housed in groups with a similar criminal background — about 60 people in each group. The living area is sparse, with bunk areas set back against the walls and a large open space in the center with tables and amenities. Some men we saw were playing chess. Others slept. Some watched TV.

Guidelines dictate that detainees should have an hour of “rec time” outside. The press tour didn’t visit the yard, but Asher tells us there are both covered and uncovered activity areas, with space to play soccer.

Asher says detainees who sign up for voluntary work duty are responsible for many of the inner workings of the Northwest Detention Center. They work in the kitchens, they clean, and they cut hair. They’re paid one dollar a day — according to federal mandate — which can be put toward their commissary fund.

“You know, it gets them the extra ramen noodles that they want,” Asher said.

Activists say that work is not voluntary, and that any detainees who stop work are punished with solitary confinement. Washington’s State Attorney General Bob Ferguson to force the GEO Group to pay minimum wage.

At least some of those workers, though, volunteered their artistic talents. The hallways of the otherwise gray and imposing facility are peppered with large, colorful murals painted by detainees — some signed with the flag of their home country.

“I know of at least one individual who was in our custody. He let us know of his talent, and he actually proposed this place could use some, something. Right? So, for several, for a couple of years he was here fighting his case. And so, all throughout the facility there are some remarkable pieces that he’s done.”

Asher doesn’t know what eventually happened to that artist and said that “He was probably deported.”

This is the first in a two part series. Tomorrow: a discussion with a man who had once been detained for four years at the Northwest Detention Center, and moved between other facilities.

It’s well documented that, after mass tragedies, there’s a higher risk of threats of copycat violence targeting public places like schools. The FBI estimates there are thousands of “hoax threats” made nationally every year, and the agency wants to warn students how dangerous they are.

“A hoax threat is considered a verbal or written threat, typically posted to social media, to attack a school, staff members, students,” said Steven Bernd with Seattle’s FBI office.

Not only are they potentially scary for the people involved, but hoax threats can waste a huge amount of police resources. There’s the initial response, which can include surrounding and sweeping the school for dangerous people or devices. Depending on the severity of the threat and how well the origin is disguised, Bernd says a significant amount of manpower could be used on the follow-up investigation when it could be devoted to another crime.

Controversial Burien letters determined to be a hoax

While each state has its own statute, the federal prohibition against “threatening interstate communications,” is broad by design. It can be almost anything — a social media post, a text message, an email. It doesn’t have to be a credible threat. A hoax threat could be a .

That’s something we’ve seen locally.

Over the 2015 – 2016 school year, Glacier Peak High School in Snohomish County was locked down regularly because of threats. Some were written notes left on bathroom floors. Law enforcement had to clear the school room-by-room to make sure there was no danger to students. The administration ultimately restricted students’ movements and had staff patrol bathrooms until they caught for at least three of the threats.

Hoax threats and consequences

The FBI generally doesn’t discuss individual cases or investigations, but Bernd did say that a hoax threat could land someone in prison for up to five years. The penalty is much stiffer if someone is hurt as a result of the investigation.

In 2016, a volunteer firefighter in South Carolina was sentenced to more than a year in prison after he . He confessed, saying he hoped other fire stations would be too busy to take emergency calls and that his unit get the experience instead. He also had to pay back the money spent to investigate the false alarm.

In 2015, a teen in Houston, Texas was sentenced to three years in prison

In his experience, Bernd says students make hoax threats to get out of assignments, because of distress and fear, or to gain notoriety.

But it’s a fine line between a hoax and a real threat, and law enforcement has to investigate every incident, every time.

Bernd says the public should also report threats, no matter how innocuous they may seem. No member of the public will get in trouble for reporting something that doesn’t result in an arrest, as long as the report is the result of a serious concern.

“You don’t want to be that one time where you’re skeptical and don’t report, and then something does happen. Because school shootings appear in the national news. Hoax threats might not,” Bernd said.

Someone caught for a hoax threat could be getting the intervention they need to stop future violence.

“This person might need help themselves. This is something that is taken very seriously by the FBI because we want to keep the public safe,” Bernd said.

Each field office has victim’s services advocates, which may be a resource even for a suspect. Counseling could be part of their sentencing.

Hoax threats can be terrifying for students, staff, and parents, and disruptive to the learning environment. They can drain taxpayer dollars, and put the person responsible in jail. Hoaxes can also desensitize the public to the point that it’s hard to spot an imminent threat.

The bottom line, says Bernd: “Think before you post. There are real-life consequences to making a threat. A hoax is not a prank. It’s a federal crime.”

Report any threat or suspicious activity by:

• Calling 911
• Calling the FBI Seattle Division at 206-622-0460
• Submitting an anonymous online tip to tips.fbi.gov

By Jillian Raftery, ����Xվ Radio

Participants can only use the power of Mother Nature or their own sweat, all while winding their way through a labyrinth of islands from the northwest corner of Washington up through what’s called “the inside passage” to the southeast corner of Alaska.

Jake Beattie, executive director of the nonprofit Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend, is the mastermind behind the whole thing.

“Like all good ideas, beer was involved,” Beattie says. A longtime boat lover himself, he explains he was trying to find a way to help people reconnect to the water. “There’s a lot of perceived barriers to having an adventure on the Puget Sound, or on the way to Alaska. Because waterfront’s expensive, boats are expensive. And I think there’s this perception that they have to be really expensive and complicated for people to get out there and really enjoy this incredible national treasure that we all are lucky enough to live next to.”

And he figured a little incentive wouldn’t hurt either.

“And it was right around the same time as NASA’s X-Prize, where they just said get into space, and if you’re the first person to do it we’ll give you $10 million dollars,” Beattie recalls. “So we just said what if we just nail 10 grand to a tree in Alaska and then see what happens? Strip away all the rules, strip away all the complication, and make it about an adventure on one of the most wild coasts that still exists on the planet.”

That’s right, 100 Benjamins are on the line. It’s presented as a trophy still stuck to a piece of driftwood. Second place finishers win a set of steak knives.

Despite these lavish prizes, Beattie had no idea it would take off. He says he figured a few of his buddies would join the bandwagon and it would end, at most, as a fun media stunt. But the 35 teams were on board for the first race last year. This year, 65 teams have signed on.

“There are truly world class athletes. We have Olympians — multiple Olympians, actually — and then we have some people who really just want to get off the couch and do something incredible,” Beattie says.

To enter, a team must submit a $750 fee, plus a small cost per person. And every participant must apply with an “adventure resume,” detailing their unique skills. They take all comers from all around the world, regardless of sailing experience — as long as you have the wherewithal and some watercraft to make it to the finish line. Beattie hasn’t turned anyone away, yet. However, several hopefuls have backed out of the race in order to hone their skills.

“It takes a deliberate sort of intentionality around thinking outside of the box, and doing something most people would think is a pretty bad idea,” Beattie says.

The vessels are just as diverse as the competitors. Some teams will traverse the passage in the latest racing yachts while others will cross in more vintage selections or even dinghies. Multiple participants have made their own boats — some include bicycle pedals to keep going when winds die. There’s even one man who plans to finish the 750 mile challenge on a .

The course itself is done in two legs. First, a 40-mile qualifying run from Port Townsend to Victoria, Canada. Anyone who finishes that in 36 hours can continue on to Alaska.

That’s where the real challenge starts.

“There is no course for the race. You go through two waypoints. Other than that, you can pick whatever route you want,” Beattie says.

One of the waypoints is , which is a famous tidal rapids, Beattie says. The current there goes 16 knots (18 mph), and switches directions four times a day.

“So it’s like a river that switches directions and makes these huge 30-foot-wide whirlpools,” Beattie says. “Usually, once a year, there’s a rowboat that gets sucked under and gets spit out a few miles later.”

The weather conditions are nearly impossible to predict, something Beattie says is a product of sailing after spring storms but before summer doldrums set in. Last year, the race started in gale force winds.

“It’s not like an ocean race where you just go, and you have to avoid some other ships that are out there,” Beattie says. “This is a unique passage that’s been done for thousands of years by boats without engines, from native canoes all the way up to people who do it every year on kayaks and things. It’s cold, so hypothermia is a big factor.”

The first winners completed the trek in five days, while the last to finish did it in 23 days.

And there is a cut-off. A sweeper boat will disqualify any participants who can’t make it to Ketchikan by July 20. Last year, only about half of the racers met that requirement.

Nearly a week and a half after the Orlando shooting left 49 dead, and 53 wounded, Seattle responded with with the special training targeted at bouncers, club owners, and bartenders. It’s not only timely because of the deadly incident at a Florida gay bar, but it comes days before Seattle celebrates its Gay Pride weekend.

But for bartender Justin Savage, who works at the popular gay bar R Place, the training is helpful for his year-round job. He has been shaken ever since the Orlando shooting at Pulse nightclub.

Related: Seattle Police adding hundreds of officers for Obama visit, Pride weekend

“R Place kind of seems like the same kind of bar as Pulse is,” Savage said. “We have a lot of the same kind of characteristics, like a family environment, a big presence in the gay community. That makes it seem very much like a mirror image of that bar. So that’s why we came.”

Preparing for a Seattle shooting

Though R Place’s security does routine bag checks and pat-downs, the staff who attended the training all said they’ve been hyper-alert ever since last week’s shooting.

But how would they react if someone showed up with the intention of murder? Savage hopes that this training would help him stay calm.

“Your first reaction is the customer’s first reaction,” Savage said. “You’re the person that has this training, that’s helping the hundreds of people you’re taking care of. As a bartender, when you come in, you’re taking care of everybody who comes in until they go home. So whenever these instances happen, you’re automatically one of the leaders and one of the people who handles it the best.”

“So this kind of training was automatically, once I heard about it, something that became important to me,” he said.

Seattle police offiver Jeff Geohagan is the man to teach Savage and others like him. Geohagan has been a police officer for nearly 24 years, spending the last 14 on Seattle’s SWAT team. He said the most effective way to fight a shooter is preparation and prevention. That’s because, according to Geohagan, most violence isn’t random.

“If we look at the numbers, the vast majority of people that are involved in one of these mass shootings come from internal, or they’re related to somebody that’s internal to that group or that organization or that employer,” Geohagan said.

For example, the attack on a San Bernadino Public Health Department training and Christmas party last December was carried out by an employee, along with his wife. Some reports say the Orlando nightclub shooter was a regular at Pulse.

Even if the threat is from an outsider, a perpetrator usually scopes out their target. So, Geohagan said, learning to recognize a threat is paramount.

“I’ll talk about a visual weapons scan, and looking at somebody — where they carry weapons, what indications they have that they might be armed, and some behavioral cues as well,” Geohagan said.

“Some of the things might be, simply, staff looks at somebody and they look away,” he said. “And they don’t hold eye contact. Or they’re anti-social, they’re alone, they’re not congregating or grouping with anybody. The clothing that they’re wearing is inconsistent with what they might be wearing for the evening — you know, somebody wearing a very, very heavy coat on an 80 degree afternoon or evening.”

Geohagan suggested one easy security technique the nightlife industry could borrow from retail.

“Nowadays, when you go into a retail store, somebody says hi to you in 30 seconds,”��Geohagan said. “Now, a lot of people would say that’s good customer service. It’s also a security thing because now the anonymity you used to have is gone.”

Geohagan said he’s constantly amazed by the amount of attention people give to their phone — and that’s an important habit to break when scanning a room for danger or reacting to a shooting if it does happen.

Reacting to a shooting

While the training wasn’t planned specifically for the nightlife industry and event organizers ahead of Seattle Pride weekend, Geohagan said there is no specific threat. But if a shooting were to happen at those events, or anywhere else, Geohagan said your reaction could be the difference between life and death.

“There’s a huge disparity between the duration of an active shooter event and the response time from law enforcement,” he said. “And the ability of law enforcement to arrive on time — it’s not very likely. It’s rare to have law enforcement on scene or even arrive while the event is still occurring.”

To that end, Geohagan teaches a slightly different version of the popular “run, hide, fight” mantra in the “A, B, Cs” of surviving a mass shooting: avoid, barricade, and combat.

Avoiding, instead of running, means trying to keep your cool and putting as much distance between yourself and the shooter. Barricading is meant as an alternative to hiding.

“Hide is a bit of a passive response,”��Geohagan said. “If we had an event happen, you could hide in a number of places here. But that doesn’t necessarily make you the hardest target possible. By going into a room, barricading things against that room, you’re creating a less desirable target for this person. They may come to that door, grab the door, shake it, can’t get in, and go on to an easier target.”

Combat is a targeted approach that should be a last resort, according to Geohagan.

As for taking a proactive self-dense approach:

“The question is always posed to me: should I carry a gun?” Geohagan said. “And it’s not just in a club, it’s in the work place, it’s life in general. And for me, it boils down to three things, the first of which — if you’re talking about a club; if you’re talking about your employer — do they allow it? If they don’t allow it, then you’re certainly not going to be carrying it. Second of which is, if you’re going to have a firearm, what are you going to do to secure it? Are you going to secure it in your vehicle — which I don’t recommend — are you going to be able to secure it at your home to make sure that children and others that are untrained don’t have access to it?”

“The third of which is, are you going to be trained?” he said. “If you have somebody that goes out and purchases a firearm and doesn’t take the physical training, but also some mental consideration to the decision-making behind taking a life, then they shouldn’t be carrying a firearm, in my opinion.”

Dr. Adam Summers has been studying fish for more than 20 years. After getting a degree in math and engineering, he was working as a diver in Australia capturing fish for aquariums. He got a series of odd requests from a customer, who turned out to be a marine biologist. Summers loved the idea of studying the ocean so much, he got a second bachelor’s in biology and never looked back, now spending most of his time running a research lab for the University of Washington out of Friday Harbor.

His specialty is “bio-mechanics” — studying how fish move.

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That came in handy 15 years ago when a group of animators were looking for someone to help them bring a reef to life for a movie called “Finding Nemo.”

“When I was a post-doc in Berkeley my land-lady was the one who ran Pixar University,”��Summers said. “So I found the consultant for her for ‘Monster’s Inc.’ And then later when she asked if I knew anybody who studied fish I said, ‘Well, that’s what I do.'”

Summers says he coached animators on dozens fish species, how some dart or glide, dive or slink through their unique environments.

Animating science

It’s not always evident what a difference the movement of a figure makes in an animated film, but Summers knew the importance from his friend’s work on “Monster’s Inc.”

“This is a movie about giant animals,” Summers said. “And they had a bio-mechanist advising them — whose job it was to understand how giant animals move. That meant that even if there was no other scaling item on the screen — if you just had a monster and had no way to know if they were big or small or medium-sized — the very way that they moved told you, subconsciously, that they were big.”

An example of a movie that could have had better movement, he says, is “The Incredible Hulk,” which used human motion capture technology. Summers’ expert eye thought it looked clunky using people-sized movements for such a large character.

Summers was blown away how much Pixar animators were dedicated to getting it right.

“Four or five months in — this was a three-year production process — they were asking me to judge which frames were from a real reef and from a computer. And they were already at a point that I could not tell which one was which,” Summers said.

An exact replica of ocean life wasn’t the goal for animators, however. It was the overall feel of the ocean, the water, the characters, and the story.

“They went and figured out how to do reality, and then pulled back — over-saturated the colors, put in extra flocculent matter. Because if you saw a perfectly photo-realistic reef with talking fish swimming in front of it, it would make your stomach hurt,” Summers said. “So, in order to get it wrong they had to know deeply how to get it right. And they got it all the way right and then backed off and got it exactly, correctly wrong.”

Even when making compromises, Summers says producers and animators were careful. For example, when Summers had to break it to producers that fish don’t actually have eyebrows.

“I mean, fish have none of what we call the ‘muscles of facial expression,'” Summers said. “And, he said, ‘Well, that’s not going to work. I need eyebrows.’ He said, ‘You can’t act without eyebrows. So you have to find eyebrows on fish for me.'”

“And that’s what we did,” Summers said. “We actually went to a museum. We pulled out all of the characters and sort of felt them up, sort of put our hands on their heads and found plausible bones that could move and be eyebrows without destroying the ‘fish-ness.'”

Summers also had to let other anatomical incorrectness slide in “Finding Nemo,” such as giving hammer-head sharks noses. Normally, the sharks have nostrils on each outer end of their hammer-like skulls, right by their eyes. But to make them look more human — more relatable — they had to be in the center of an anthropomorphized face.

Bringing science to a younger audience

Summers says to this day he gets called out by kids who aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions.

“‘Were those boy sharks or girl sharks? You know, I didn’t see claspers on them, but they had boy-shark names,'” Summers said, for example.

“Then you have to explain to them that the claspers didn’t animate well,” he said with a sigh.

As for “Finding Dory,” he couldn’t let on much about his work, but did say that, along with general fish movements, he did a lot of work with a certain cephalopod.

“It’s no great secret that, in ‘Finding Dory,’ one of the really wonderful characters is an octopus,” Summers said. “So, I spent a lot of time talking about camouflage in octopi, and how they change texture and change color.”

What he will say is that, even with some inaccuracies, Summers wishes Pixar would churn out an ocean movie every year, so more young people will be inspired to learn about life under the waves.

“It is time to envision a Seattle without the Jungle,” King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said the day he charged three homeless teenage brothers with those murders. “It’s time to shut it down, clean it up, and change the environment so that it cannot become a lawless encampment again.”

Related: State trooper attacked as Seattle’s homeless problem spills onto I-5

City leaders and Governor Jay Inslee pushed for something to be done. But what steps must be taken? That’s where Peg Staeheli comes in.

“Our task is to be one part of a city and state initiative,” Staeheli said. “And so we are tasked to look at it from the design perspective.”

Staeheli is a trained landscape architect and the head of MIG, a design firm founded in Berkeley, Calif. in 1982. The company focuses on urban planning and has partnered with city government on past projects like redeveloping Seattle’s oldest public housing complex at and the High Point Housing Authority Project.

Her team of 30 architects, engineers, urban designers, and technicians have been hired by the City of Seattle on a $47,000 contract. Their job is to take a hard look at what to do with the space.

They’ve got a lot of work to do.

At its peak this spring, the Jungle was home to approximately 400 homeless people camped out in the greenbelt under I-5, on the side of Beacon Hill near I-90.

Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins compiled a report on conditions there and counted 250 fires in five years, 500 emergency medical responses, and “miles and miles of garbage and trash and human waste, rodent infestation, drug paraphernalia” during a recent assessment.

Many suggested simply fencing the whole area off with razor wire. Earlier this year, the Washington State Department of Transportation detailed for the Legislature a $1.5 million plan, saying it had the specifications mapped out and could complete it within nine months.

But homeless advocates and some city council members pushed back against that idea.

“A million dollars to put up a fence that people are either going to climb over, cut or dig under is ridiculous,” city council member Debora Juarez said. “And quite frankly, I’m really offended.”

Juarez pushed for the money to be spent instead on housing or other assistance.

Other ideas have included hiring private security to keep people away from the Jungle. Some suggested clearing the brush and debris to prevent encampments hidden in the foliage.

Still others, including council member Kshama Sawant, pushed for plumbing and portable toilets to improve living conditions.

Staeheli’s proposals could include some of those ideas — or none at all. She says they’re trying to think outside of the box as much as possible, without any assumptions.

“Obviously, all of us bring some personal connection in,” Staeheli said. “Yet we also need to look at things from other perspectives. So we come in from a very moving-around-the-view kind of position.”

And they’re still early in the process, having signed the contract in mid-May.

“We’re at the information gathering stage. That’s kind of our typical designer, in the design world, what we do,” Staeheli said. “Bring a lot of information in and try to keep a really open approach to all of our work. So, looking around, talking to people, observation. Looking at data, kind of looking at some technical information.”

That means poring over detailed geographical and aerial maps of the area, figuring out where the city property merges with state and county right-of-way. The team will also examine where utilities like water, sewer, and storm drains are located.

According to the contract, the crew will have three planned visits to the Jungle, and will talk with stakeholders like the city council, local businesses, and Union Gospel Mission volunteers who have been working tirelessly on outreach efforts at homeless camps.

Staeheli isn’t tasked with trying to get homeless off the streets or preventing homelessness. Another consultant is looking at the city’s strategy for that.

The proposals Staeheli is working on are focused on managing access and keeping people safe, and could include elements like planting trees and other greenery to restrict access to and from the street to the areas under I-5 and the Jungle. They might add lighting. Another possibility could be using that area under and around I-5 24/7 so there are always people there.

By the end of October, Staeheli will submit three different concepts to the city. The state has kicked in $100,000 to put in place whatever recommendations they might contain.

Ultimately, the highest directive is finding some way to ensure safety for both the people under the freeway — and traveling above.

Sam Mendez, executive director of the Cannabis Law and Policy Project (CLPP), which is organizing the event, says despite Washington legalizing recreational marijuana in 2014, there are plenty of legal questions left to answer.

Related: Seattle pot shop draws criticism over location

“Such as what to do about pesticides now, what about access to youth,” Mendez said. “And a number of other issues that, now that we have at least a state legal system, how do we approach that from a policy perspective to make sure that system works?”

The CLPP has been working hand-in-hand with the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board to figure out how to do just that, and engaging in some of the first major research of the pot industry.

For example, when the state launched legal pot, it was only for the recreational market, forcing medical dispensaries to shut down.

Over time, the state developed guidelines for the new market, including aspects like how much growing space to allow. That was work done in partnership with Mendez and his colleagues, who interviewed producers and gathered data on an industry that had never before been quantified.

“We concluded that between about 1.7 to 2 million square feet would satisfy the current medical marijuana market,” Mendez said. “At the time, the LCB had licensed 10 million square feet of canopy for the state. It’s now up to about 12 million square feet. So we concluded that the current allotment was enough to satisfy demand for both the recreational market and the medical market in Washington state.”

Now, the state has released guidelines and 80 percent of licensed recreational stores are licensed to sell medical marijuana as well.

But there are plenty of other glitches within Washington’s fledgling marijuana market.

“There’re issues around taxes and banking,” Mendez notes. “It’s difficult right now to deal with the IRS because there’s what’s known as the 280 E provision, which makes it difficult — if not impossible — for businesses to deduct expenses.”

These are marijuana businesses, and because cannabis is still federally classified as a Schedule I substance, it makes it illegal by federal standards.

“And there’s also issues around banking, or lack thereof,” Mendez said. “A lot of banks are federally chartered, so a lot of larger banks simply won’t take on cannabis clients.”

It’s a reminder that, although marijuana is quickly being normalized in the northwest, it is still illegal and only a permitted by authorities simply looking the other way.

Some credit unions have started accepting marijuana businesses, but most pot shops turn to cash, which can be a pain for customers — and an easy target for thieves.

Mendez says marijuana itself has been around for decades, but the legal industry is brand new — as is emerging research into its medical and recreational effects. He hopes that the University’s efforts, along with more studies nationwide will help iron out the bumps as pot goes from black market to mainstream around the country.

“We hope to have the leadership in government, as well everybody who attends the conference, to walk away with some more ideas and information around what’s going on here in Washington, what’s working, what isn’t working, and what solutions we seek in order to address those issues,” Mendez said.

But as groundbreaking treatments continue to be developed and the odds of surviving climb, Doctor Bart Scott with Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center says more and more patients are rejecting recommended treatments in favor of natural remedies that run the gamut from herbal supplements to raw diets.

Dr. Bart Scott, who specializes in bone marrow diseases, accepts the Dr. Ali Al-Johani Award, which recognizes excellence in clinical patient care. Although cancer research is ramping up every year, Dr. Scott says he sees more patients looking to alternative therapies rather than treatments like chemo.

Dr. Scott says five years ago 10 percent of patients were turning away from chemo and radiation, often for religious reasons. But, with the rising popularity of natural medicine, as many as 25 percent of his patients now put off or refuse traditional treatments. And that’s a hard thing to hear.

“Honestly, it’s very difficult,” he said. “But you have to let people make their own decisions.”

He attributes that behavior to all the information — and misinformation — online, little of which is rooted in science.

“With cancer, since it’s a life-threatening illness, they want to believe that there’s some herb that they can take to make their cancer go away,” Scott said. “So, you know, I’m not really disappointed or angered with the patient. I’m disappointed and angered with the people who would try to profit off their susceptibility to this. That’s really a shame.”

And some people do profit by advertising holistic programs or natural pills that cure cancer.

“I had a patient that went for ‘stem cell therapy’ in Mexico,” Scott recalled. “They just got injections of things that they don’t even know what they are, which is really distressing. They ended up having a severe infection in their liver and in their blood stream and almost died from a complication from that.”

Another 28-year-old patient at Seattle’s Cancer Care Alliance, which partners with the Fred Hutch, chose coffee enemas and vitamin infusions over chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery prescribed by her doctor. After two years, the cancer, which was once curable, had spread to her liver. By the time the patient accepted treatment, the cancer was no longer curable.

A recent of 685 women in the U.S. with invasive breast cancer that had not spread shows nearly nine out of 10 were taking natural supplements, herbs, and minerals, or practicing mind-body therapies. Of the patients for whom chemotherapy was recommended, researchers reported 11 percent didn’t start that treatment.

Chemo and radiation aren’t right for everyone. For some patients who have terminal cases or other diseases alongside cancer, some oncologists will recommend palliative care. Often, it comes down to a balance between extending life and the quality of that life.

Fear and ‘big pharma’

In Dr. Scott’s experience, many patients who could be treated or even cured are attracted to natural or holistic treatments out of fear: fear of cancer, and fear of what cures it. They see the devastating effects chemo and radiation can have on the human body, and want to find another way to get better.

“I think that they see it as being safer,” Scott said. “I think that they see it as being less toxic. And I think that they read that it works. And so why wouldn’t they go for that? I mean, if you were told that, here’s a pill that won’t cause any side effects and it will get rid of your cancer, makes sense to try it. Problem is, that’s not factually correct.”

Still others distrust “big pharma” and think chemo is being pushed on them because it makes money. But Dr. Scott says that’s not the case.

“So if I had some magic pill that would get rid of your cancer, I would do it,” he said. “I don’t get paid more by giving toxic therapy. If I had less toxic therapy, I would do that.”

Ultimately, it’s the patients’ choice. All that Dr. Scott can do is advise them to the best of his ability. Many patients who delay recommended treatments such as chemo, radiation, or bone marrow transplants come back — and it’s important to give them that opening.

“If you shut down that conversation and you say ‘oh, that’s stupid’ or ‘that’s ignorant’ and try to take it in a negative way, the problem with that approach is that then the patient is ultimately going to be even further harmed because they’re going to be reluctant to come back to you when things go wrong,” Dr. Scott explains.

An approach like that could scare patients away. Dr. Scott’s strategy is data-focused, which is what he would recommend to any doctor faced with a patient rejecting treatment, or seeking treatment that’s not recommended.

“And I say, ‘You know you could choose that. You’ve read that on the Internet, but that’s not really a clinical trial, and clinical trials are how we try to discover if a treatment is good or not. And I have this other treatment that has been tested in a clinical trial and it shows, you know, 54 percent response rate and I think you should consider this – the side effects are this, this, and this.'”

What about patients who aren’t convinced?

“I’m not against alternative types of treatments,” Scott said. “What I would be against is using just alternative types of treatments solely. And I think it’s worth having this discussion with your physician, and sometimes, saying a chemo versus a non-chemo approach — how about a chemo plus a non-chemo approach? I think that’s a much better way to go about that. And I’m certainly willing to consider things that patients may want to do, in combination with [chemo] rather than subtraction from.”

The State Department of Natural Resources relies heavily on college students as seasonal firefighters, but a big chunk of their manpower remains missing until classes are over.

Related: Sacrifice of Twisp River firefighters inspires new recruits

However, DNR spokesperson Sandra Kaiser says that there are contingency plans to make sure crews are available in the meantime.

“You know, we have arrangements with states around us – Idaho, Oregon, California – we regularly will send firefighters to help them; they send firefighters to help us. So there’s certainly a lot of partners and a lot of resources when we need to call on them,” Kaiser explains.

And after two back-to-back record fire seasons, trainings for the rest of the crews have been moved up by a full month.

“We’ve been training our helicopter crews that drop water and flame retardant on fire,” Kaiser said. “We just completed that in Cle Elum. We have 13 more engines – fire engines – on the landscape that we’ll be deploying, most of those in Eastern Washington where we have the most fire. And we have three very robust training sessions for firefighters – one that we’ve just completed in Yakima. And that was DNR firefighters with the National Guard, which will give us more folks on the landscape if things get bad. We’ll have two additional training sessions – one at Deer Park near Spokane June 18-26, and one on the west side at Rainier from June 20-30.”

The Department of Natural Resources has spent the spring beefing up its fleet of firefighting equipment, adding three additional fixed-wing aircraft, for a total of six, which can drop flame retardant from the air, stopping wildfires from burning out of control.

Kaiser says personnel are also pre-positioning fire engines for quicker responses.

“Where we have been able to move things ahead, we’ve certainly done that,” Kaiser says.

A study of workers in the epicenter of the Puget Sound region’s tech sector — the South Lake Union neighborhood — showed that more than half of workers there live outside of Seattle city limits, in cities like Mercer Island, Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, and Redmond. Where higher concentrations of tech workers do live, rents do tend to rise throughout the neighborhood more than other area rents. That factors into rent increases both inside tech-heavy neighborhoods like South Lake Union, Belltown, and Queen Anne, as well as in surrounding areas.

Related: Not enough workers to keep up with Seattle boom

However, neighborhoods like the University District, which don’t have high concentrations of tech workers, have also seen big jumps in median rent. Rents across the city overall have gone up 8.5 percent in the last year.

Zillow’s chief economist, Svenja Gudell, says it’s not just the tech sector that’s growing — the overall economic prosperity in the Northwest has caused a population boom of more than 14,000 people per year since 2010, according to Census data.

“A lot of other sectors are attracting workers, and therefore, more people are moving here and looking for housing,” Gudell said. “And the more people that come here, the more supporting industries you’ll also have. Healthcare will be doing quite well then, too, because you need to actually take care of all these people that move here. Restaurants, restaurant workers, servers — all those industries will also pick up and attract workers themselves.”

That influx of people leads to a classic situation of supply and demand. Unfortunately, even with all the building in Seattle, there’s still not enough supply.

“There’s just not a whole lot of new rentals being built,” Gudell said. “Especially if you’re looking at middle-of-the-road rentals, or even more affordable rentals. And then when you have relatively tight inventory, but a lot of demand for that inventory, prices tend to rise.”

Part of the problem, Gudell said, is that it’s tough to build in Seattle. Finding land is challenging since more than 60 percent of the city is zoned for single-family housing. Though city leaders are trying to make it easier for creative housing solutions such as backyard cottages, building apartments is made more expensive by strict regulations, as well as a shortage of skilled labor. So apartments that are being built are higher-end, with amenities to attract those willing to pay higher rents, like rooftop lounges.

And the climbing rents keep the cycle going.

“Given that rents are as high as they are, we are faced with the problem that renters are having a much tougher time saving for down payments,” Gudells aid. “So it’s a bit of a vicious cycle that’s keeping people away from being able to afford buying a home. Also, there’s low inventory on the for-sale side, so they’re having a hard time finding a home. But, saving for that down payment is tough, which is, in turn, increasing the demand for rentals and driving up the rental price.”

Related: Seattle cemetery honors forgotten hero 66 years later

Navy Commander Domenick “Spike” Anthony Spinelli is among them. He was an ace navigator and bombardier from Oak Harbor who enlisted during World War II and rose through the ranks to become an officer during the Vietnam War. He was dubbed missing in action when his A-6 Intruder was shot down on a reconnaissance mission over enemy territory.

Spinelli’s name was misfiled and never made it on to the list of Washington’s fallen heroes — until today, 29 years later. Heidi Audette, with the Washington State Office of Veterans Affairs, says researchers caught the mistake and now his name will be added to 1,124 others on .

“I think that it can help to bring closure to those families. Domenick Anthony Spinelli is still listed as unaccounted for in the Department of Defense,” said Brenda Spicer, manager of Evergreen Washelli Cemetery. “So I think it’s very important that we’re able to signify that on our memorial because it does have great importance for the fact that these individuals have never been able to come home.”

Spinelli’s name will be listed with a “+” symbol, which means his remains have not been recovered.

Thousands of families like Spinelli’s still don’t know what happened to their loved ones.

But for those who came home after paying the ultimate price, volunteers will walk rows of gravestones and lay them with wreaths and flags.

Monday marks the 90th year staff at Seattle’s Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery have hosted ceremonies for the 5,000 veterans interred there.

“We literally start a month before Memorial Day working to get everything picture perfect,” Spicer said.

The cemetery is the final resting place for seven Medal of Honor recipients. And Evergreen-Washelli prides itself on preserving those decades of history with extensive grave markers.

“Read the markers – you can see people who passed on way back in the 1800s, to people modern-day,” Spicer said. “Today’s markers, you can see pictures of people in full color and you can see epitaphs with wonderful stories and mementos and pictures of things that are meaningful to their life. In the olden days, you can see hand carvings, which was [sic] chiseled, so there’s a big difference.”

Visitors will be able to see the memorial for the first time after it underwent extensive repairs for cracks and received upgrades to the lighting.

Festivities at Evergreen-Washelli begin at 1:30 p.m.

Related: SPD took 6 hours to respond to stolen car even though security had located it and the thieves

On March 10 the victim was driving his Nissan on 19th Avenue in the Lake City area, waiting to take a right onto NE 85th Street. According to police reports, he was about to turn when a red PT Cruiser to his left swerved across two lanes and cut him off.

The Nissan driver reacted by honking.

That’s when witnesses say the PT Cruiser started swerving around, trying to run the man off the road. Twice, the PT Cruiser screeched to a halt. The second time, Nissan wasn’t so quick to react and rear-ended the other car.

That’s when it got ugly.

According to witnesses, the driver of the PT Cruiser got out and kicked a dent in the back of the Nissan before reaching through the open drivers’ side window and smashing the man’s face into his own steering wheel — over and over.

In a case of Seattle road rage, a man was assaulted in the street. Seattle police took more than an hour to respond. (SPD)

The suspect took off as witnesses rushed over and called 911. One man who called police said he could hear the commotion in his office across the busy road. The 911 call was recorded.

“Do you think they need a medic?” a dispatcher asked.

“He’s got a nosebleed,” a witness said. “He’s got three witnesses standing around him. I think he’s fine, but — actually, he’s on his knees right now. I think he took a pretty hard hit.”

Those first 911 calls came in at 4:40 p.m. But, an officer wasn’t at the scene until more than an hour later — at almost 6 p.m. And medical aid never arrived.

“Sorry it took awhile to get here,” the responding officer is heard saying on in-car video. “I actually got called in four hours early to work today — because we don’t have anybody at work today, apparently.”

Witnesses described the suspect as a 5’ 8” tall white male of unknown age with dark hair and an orange beard, wearing a black shirt. He was driving a red or maroon PT Cruiser with several passengers inside.

The suspect’s car apparently didn’t have any license plates on it — just temporary paper tags in the window. That led the responding officer to believe it was stolen.

“Most of the time they’re fake [temporary tags], depending on who it is that’s driving the car. And the car might be stolen if it’s set up like that because they’ll make their own, they’ll print them out and then write on them just like a dealership would or a DMV would,” the officer said on the video.

And because of the time it took to respond, the officer said there was probably nothing they could do.

“The only thing I can do really is kinda let everybody know — keep a look out for the car,” the officer said. “And I’m going to be here all night and stuff, so I can kinda keep en eye out and see if I see it in some of the hang out spots.”

More than an hour to respond. Dispatchers never sent medical aid. The victim had to drive himself to the emergency room.

A Seattle Police spokesman was at a loss and could not account for the delay. This type of road rage assault is considered the second highest priority crime, just below a home invasion. It was logged as such by dispatchers.

No one from the department would go on the record, except to send this statement:

We are conducting a major overhaul of our 911 Response Center. Our department is investing in better technology, hiring additional staff, providing better training and upgrading our facilities to improve efficiency and communication in our 911 Center. We continue to conduct ongoing reviews of 911 responses, policies and procedures to ensure we are working to achieve our service goals.

It’s not clear how many officers were on patrol in the north precinct that day, but the Seattle Police Department has acknowledged they are understaffed. One recent report recommended the city add 200 more officers to the force.

Meanwhile …

The road rage incident was the second concerning traffic event in one day and in the same area of Seattle.

Around 4 p.m. a man near NE 77th Street and 20th Avenue NE called police to say that a woman was driving erratically and almost hit his car, forcing him to swerve off the road and careen into someone’s front yard. The caller said he thought the woman was drunk and that he was afraid she might go on to hurt someone else.

This case was different than the road rage incident when it took more than an hour for an officer to show up — no officers ever responded.

The caller sat by the road for an hour before calling 911 again, saying the woman had driven back to the scene, presumably to see if police were there. While waiting, the caller and a witness were apparently able to identify the suspect’s potential residence, since he saw the suspect circle around and pull into a nearby driveway.

The department did not file a case report on the crime. No arrests were made in either case.

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Bellevue football boosters are backing up what they’ve said for months: they’ve done nothing wrong.

Debate: Are the parents to blame in the Bellevue football scandal?

Investigators for the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association claimed coaches illegally recruited players and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to coaches.

But boosters for the Bellevue Wolverines Football Club say the investigators skewed the facts to make the district look bad, and hounded students and parents in “interrogations” that went too far.

The Bellevue report also says if their program is in the wrong, then all other schools must be. Since nearly every school in King County raises comparable amounts of money. And other schools also use that money to pay coaches, subsidize training camps, and even provide student scholarships to private schools and college.

This weekend, more than 2,000 climate activists hope to garner that same attention in a three-day demonstration against fossil fuels, at the foot of the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes.

Related: Kayaktivists vow to protest if Shell returns to Seattle

Although the U.S. and other nations agreed in November to do everything possible to prevent average global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, organizer Emily Johnston says it’s not enough. Some estimates show temperatures have already gone up 1.3 degrees.

“Washington state jobs and lives are already at risk, with all the crazy wildfires we’ve had, with the problem with the salmon runs and the oysters,” Johnston explains. “People are definitely waking up to the fact that this is a real and local issue.”

Johnston says there needs to be immediate action to break free from fossil fuels, however, they are used — not slowly over the next decade or so, but now.

And part of that is making sure industry workers are not left behind.

“Anacortes, like other refinery towns, is a place that is economically dependent on fossil fuel jobs. You know, a lot of those are good jobs – they’re union jobs, they’re family wage jobs. So nobody wants to see that kind of work go away and not be replaced by something – also not have it be a really rational and careful transition,” Johnston says.

And those workers are all invited to participate in the weekend’s events, which will include workshops and discussions to educate anyone who wants to know more, and arm activists with information to be part of the climate fight.

A fleet of kayaks will be out on the water constantly, celebrating the earth and water, and honoring indigenous peoples of the Northwest with traditional blessing ceremonies.

And, of course, there are plans for civil disobedience.

“For obvious reasons, we’re not going to be specific about exactly what that is or exactly where or exactly when,” Johnston says.

Johnston says the group is committed to nonviolent action, and they will not be blocking refinery workers’ access to the facilities because of that. However, at least 500 attendees say they are fully prepared to be arrested.

On the other hand, the group is careful not to disturb the area’s delicate ecosystem – they brought in biologists to map out heron nesting areas and native fauna — just in case.

The weekend is just one of six events across the nation and more protests that span every continent, except Antarctica, that are pushing to wean individuals, businesses, and governments off fossil fuels.

“Whether it’s getting involved in hearings and writing letters, you know, talking to your legislators and all those kinds of things,” Johnston said. “Or occasionally just showing up en masse and putting your bodies on the line and joining together with other people who are just as concerned as you are — all of those things really can help people understand they have power in the world and they have the power to try to save this world for their kids and their grand-kids.”

That is why Kristin Finkbeiner, northwest political activist and founder of the group , is recommending for the very first time that parents not watch debates with their younger children.

“Maybe talk about the elections without watching what’s happening in real time,” Finkbeiner said. “Because, too often, it’s inappropriate behavior, inappropriate language. Unbelievable that it’s happening and that we have to say that, but it is, indeed, happening.”

Related: Trump undermines his ‘Crooked Hillary’ concept with a single refusal

One example: former GOP hopeful Marco Rubio’s comments about Donald Trump at a rally in February.

“He’s always calling me ‘little Marco.’ And I’ll admit, he’s taller than me, he’s 6’2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s 5’2”,” Rubio said. “Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands.”

After that, MomsRising was flooded with calls and emails with parents struggling to explain those comments to their children.

“This is why it’s important not to stand back and sort of hide from the bullying language, but instead – as adults – to stand up and say this is not OK,” Finkbeiner said. “This is not OK for Washington, this is not OK for our nation, and this most certainly is not OK to have a presidential candidate, much less a president, who is running on a potty mouth.”

It’s important to note that Finkbeiner is a Democrat (married to a former Republican state lawmaker). Her organization, MomsRising, lobbies for a variety of family issues like paid maternity leave, sick and safe time, and equal pay.

And she has strong opinions.

“If I was Donald Trump’s mom, I would put him in a time out,” Finkbeiner said. “He needs to take ten deep breaths and he needs to think about what he’s saying and who he’s saying it to and how it’s impacting other people. So it would a time out for the one and only Donald Trump if he were my child.”

But Finkbeiner says the adult trash talk this year transcends party lines. Even people within the same party who support different candidates are going after each other in ways she hasn’t seen in a lifetime of political work.

And youngsters are picking up on the tension. They might not understand exactly what’s going on, but they are hearing all the yelling. And the name calling. And children start to think that behavior is OK.

A of more than 2,000 teachers by the Southern Poverty Law Center showed a surge in bullying related to some of the topics in the election, such as race or political affiliation. Some local schools have reported the same issues, going so far as sending letters home asking parents to talk with their children about appropriate behavior.

So Finkbeiner has some strategies for parents to talk politics with children of all ages:

– Have an open discussion with your child about what the candidates are talking about: their policies, backgrounds, etc.
– Explain that people are really passionate about their opinions and are having a hard time talking about them without getting upset.
– Be a good example. When we as adults hear someone say something we really disagree with, even if it sounds outlandish, it’s important to lead by example and approach that other person with respect.

Finkbeiner even has a handy list of phrases she uses in those situations – after taking some deep breaths:

“Calmly say – not angrily say – ‘really? That is not my experience.’ ‘What’s going on here?'” Finkbeiner suggests. “Or, ‘that’s not necessary.’ Or, ‘why are you doing this?’ Or even: ‘where are you coming from with that perspective?'”

And if the other person is agitated, don’t react in the same way.

This election is also different from past years in that children and adults alike can’t escape the heat at home because election talk now lives 24 hours a day online.

Finkbeiner has suggestions for how to deal with that too: only write online what you’d say to someone’s face, and have “the talk” with your children about trolls – when it’s appropriate to engage or let it go.

“Maintaining that calm, sharing your perspective, possibly including some facts and some links, but not resorting to name calling,” Finkbeiner said. “I think it’s very important that we rise above just flat out name calling and try to move our conversation – on whatever platform – to a deeper level about the policies we’re talking about, and not calling names.”

When tunneling started in 2013, Bertha was expected to go 35 feet per day. But progress was much slower than that because the first 1,000 or so feet were expected to be “Training wheels” while Seattle Tunnel Partners made sure everything was ship shape.

Related: Track Bertha’s progress under the viaduct

The problem: Bertha ran into trouble about 1,000 feet in after chewing through a pipe and stopping for repairs — for two years.

The State Department of Transportation would not answer any questions about why tunneling progress is currently going so smoothly and a spokesperson said no one from Seattle Tunnel Partners was available for interviews. However, interviews with ����Xվ Radio over the past week break down the stretch of success into four factors:

• Better soil:

When tunneling first started, the machine ran into loose, wet, sloppy soil that caused significant delays.

“Coming out of the launch pit, the contractor was in loose, hydraulically-placed fill. The Denny Regrade, if you will: the old estuary deposits, old man-made fill. So the ground was much softer, wetter, looser. When they got to about King Street the face of the machine was fully into this over-consolidated glacial, hard soil. And that makes conditions much easier to manage,” Sowers said.

More than 1,000 feet later, Bertha is in the middle of the kind of soil the machine was designed for: hard glacial till and packed clay.

“These soil conditions are actually, in some ways, ideal,” Sowers said. “The sands don’t run, it’s not real loose and soft. The hard material is allowed to sort of stay vertical longer, and they’re more forgiving in terms of grout subsidence.”

• Repairs:

Seattle Tunnel Partners had two years to repair Bertha as the tunnel boring machine sat immobile under Seattle.

“The machine has gone through an extensive amount of rehabilitation, if you will, to get it ready after damage was found. So, the contractor’s very confident that they’ve done a prudent amount of effort to get the machine repaired, strengthen it,” Sowers said.

Back in December of 2013 Bertha ran into several problems that led to a tunneling shutdown. After overheating several times, engineers discovered problems with the giant tunnel boring machine’s seals. Bertha had run into a 119-foot steel pipe – one of the only materials Bertha could not cut through. Although there was speculation that the pipe caused Bertha’s breakdown, that has not identified as the cause of mechanical failings.

Hitachi-Zosen, which designed and built Bertha, manufactured a new bearing-block, outer seal ring, and a new seal system that is more accessible for crews to access in case repairs are needed. STP also replaced the center pipe on the machine, among .

Tunneling started again at the end of December 2015. Before diving under the Viaduct, Bertha underwent even more repairs, maintenance checks, and testing.

“They got out in front of the machine, they did inspections of all the cutting tools that they could access – there’s over 700 cutting tools on the cutter head and they replaced about 11 of them,” Sowers said.

• Management:

After a sinkhole surfaced in January, Governor Jay Inslee and the State Department of Transportation ordered tunneling to stop. After that, Seattle Tunnel Partners made plenty of changes so they could get approval to get back to work.

“They’ve made operational changes, they’ve made some equipment modifications, and they’ve even changed out some personnel,” Sowers explained. “The team that they have on right now and the operators they have, have proven over the last couple hundred feet that they can be successful mining in these types of difficult soil conditions.”

New personnel included four tunneling experts, among them a globally recognized tunneling expert with more than 30 years of experience.

• Looking ahead:

Both Seattle Tunnel Partners and the State Department of Transportation have the benefit of hindsight after a steel pipe helped derail tunneling two years ago.

This time, they didn’t take any chances.

“After encountering the test well, we did go and do an exhaustive LiDAR-ture [ground penetrating radar] search to make sure there were no other test wells in the tunnel horizon,” Sowers said.

Since mining resumed last Friday, Bertha has averaged 23.7 feet per day. The only time she’s moved faster was in 2013, before the machine was damaged when STP representatives say there was a month where tunneling clocked a faster pace.

Though tunneling seems to be going well now, it’s important to remember this is just a two-week chunk of a project that isn’t slated for completion until sometime in 2018. So, project administrators are crossing their fingers that this kind of progress continues for the rest of the next 8,000-feet that Bertha still has to go.

Related: Live updates during viaduct closure

It’s a tune akin to an ice cream truck — a 57-foot high ice cream truck that weighs 7,000 tons.

Manufacturer Hitachi-Zosen pre-programmed the melody into the machine before shipping it from Osaka, Japan. It’s played every time . It lets the 33 workers — all dedicated specifically to keep Bertha going — as well as the rest of the crews in the tunnel, know that drilling is back on.

Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct closed at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The night crew will do testing and maintenance checks on Bertha before the morning crew turns the machine on and starts the push to mine 385 feet forward, under Highway 99. Then, mining will continue 24 hours a day for about two weeks or until that section of tunnel is completed.

First, it was the Carlton Complex of fires in 2014, scorching more than a quarter million acres in Central Washington, and taking with it over 300 homes from Twisp to Pateros. It was the biggest single fire in history.

Just a year later, the Okanogan complex of fires ripped through north-central Washington and nearly broke the record for the size of a single fire set the year before. By summer’s end, flames ravaged more than a million acres across the state. At $374 million dollars, it was the most expensive fire season in Washington, ever.

Related: Sacrifice of Twisp River firefighters inspires new recruits

Joe Smillie with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources says they had about 8,500 personnel fighting fires in August and the department still had to request assistance.

Smillie says the Legislature spent about $190 million to cover the bill after the fact. While it’s standard to allocate some money to firefighting and pay the balance later, Smillie says getting more of that money up front would be a game changer.

“The idea was if we got the money up front we could have more personnel ready and equipped in advance and we wouldn’t have those large fires that rack up those large bills,” Smillie said.

So, the department asked for another $24 million in this year’s supplemental budget to do prevention work, in addition to the $10 million the DNR already gets for prevention. That includes strategies such as thinning forests, controlled burns, and helping homeowners get ready for the fire season by creating defensible space around their properties.

For a few years now, the DNR has gotten a fraction of what they’ve asked for.

Republican Representative Joel Kretz lives in Okanogan and has pushed for more money for firefighting. He says the memory of the last two fire seasons is still fresh.

Kretz has been out on the fire lines and says prevention steps can make or break a fight against fire.

Kretz does think the state fire response needs an overhaul, that private citizens and local fire districts should have more power to respond to fires on state land that could spread to forests, farms, and homes. He also wants more aggressive responses to fires.
However, Kretz says more money is needed. And it’s blocked by people who just don’t understand the gut-wrenching agony of losing everything, year after year.

“One legislator that was very involved in the funding of this stuff at one point just said look I don’t give a damn about this fire stuff, it doesn’t affect my district,” Kretz said.

But State Senate Democrat Christine Rolfes of Kitsap County says that’s not it at all. She says the fire funding has become a political battle, and that the people stonewalling are in Kretz’s own party.

“For example, in last year’s budget [2015] Democrats in the House gave them about half of what they requested,” Rolfes said. “The Republicans in the Senate gave them zero. And then that number was reduced significantly when the two sides came together.”

Rolfes says the budget had been slashed during the recession, but now that the state has some more wiggle room, there are more issues competing for limited dollars, like education and mental health funding. As Democrats and Republicans battle over the budget and whether to raise new revenue to fund it all, fire prevention loses out.

“And we were hoping to get ahead of it this year,” Smillie said. “We’ll still make due with what we got but it would have been nice to have some more.”

So far, Smillie says crews have knocked down at least 30 wild land fires this year. And with warmer, drier weather in the forecast across the northwest, only time will tell if 2016 will be just as catastrophic as 2015, and 2014.

Meanwhile, firefighters are training, crews are doing forest thinning and controlled burns – everything they can to get ready.

And Representative Kretz is hoping it will be enough.

“I can tell you we’re tired of it in Okanagan County. We’ve had enough. And it hasn’t been working.”