Police closing in on car prowler

NEWPORT – Newport Chief of Police Wade Nelson told the Newport City Council at its Monday night meeting that the area has been hit with a spate of car prowling. Newport has especially been hit, with six cars reported prowled Sunday. The car prowling has been going on about three and a half weeks, he said.

“In the last three weeks, we’ve recorded 15-20 calls,” he said. He said the break-ins happen between 2-6:30 a.m.

Nelson said the police think they know who it is. “We got some good video,” he said.

He said the suspect works mainly alone, maybe with one helper.

“They’re just walking every street trying every handle,” Nelson said. If one opens, they ravage the car. The suspects don’t break into the cars, as they don’t want the noise of a break in, he said. They only prowl unlocked cars, he said.

There hasn’t been any one area that has been hit, it’s been all over, including Oldtown.

Nelson said he’s surprised at how many wallets and guns are left in unlocked cars.

“It’s amazing what everybody leaves in their cars,” Nelson said. He said Monday night there were two firearms taken out of two cars in Oldtown. “We had one two weeks ago stolen out of a car right here in Newport.”

Earlier in the council meeting, councilors were talking about the car prowling problem. Motion detecting lights and cameras weren’t enough to keep cars safe, city council member Nathan Longley said. He said there was a car prowled at his house.

“We had both,” Longley said about a camera and motion detector. He said it was somebody wearing a hoodie. “It’s hard to identify them,” he said.

Nelson said the Newport Police Department is short staffed. It lost one officer to the Washington State Patrol and another is in the academy. Another officer is finishing up his field training and will be patrolling by himself in November.

Because of the lack of officers, the Newport School District hasn’t had a school resource officer.

“The school’s not super happy with that, because I had to pull a resource officer,” Nelson said. “They really want someone to be there 100% of the time.”

Nelson said he is in negotiations with the school. He said retention of officers is a priority. The average time an officer stays with Newport is two and a half to three years, he said.

He said increasing the employees’ insurance to cover one child would help retain officers. He said with young employees looking to start a family, the insurance is important.

Nelson also reported that picking up stray dogs has taken up police time. He said police handle about 15 dog calls a month. He said he was glad a leash law was being implemented. He recommended that the holding fee for strays be increased to $50 a night from its current $5 a day. There is currently a $25 stray dog fee as well.

“It takes us a long time to wrangle one dog,” Nelson said. For one thing, it takes some time to catch the dog. Then once caught the dog must be taken back, checked to see if there is a microchip that has owner information. That’s pretty time consuming, he said, because if the dog has a chip, the officer needs to check the chip company’s database. If the owner isn’t found the dog is housed for 72 hours before it can go to the Priest River animal shelter. Keeping the dog 72 hours requires the officers act as the animal’s owner, feeding, watering and cleaning up after the dog.

Nelson also updated the council on his desire to get new tasers. The current tasers aren’t effective for more than about 15 feet, he said, and won’t be supported next year.

The ones he wants to get will be effective up to about 45 feet, he said. It would increase officer safety, he said.

He said it would cost about $27,000 to switch to another taser platform, he said. That could be broken up into $5,000-a-year payments, he said. The city would get about $1,000 from turning in its old tasers and could sell its non-lethal shotguns for about $1,200.

The council is waiting for a presentation to decide on that.