Holy shit! A shootout on Highway 101! Just as the Memorial Day and JFFA weekend is starting. The perfect time for traffic to come to a dead stop on 101. Port Angeles really can't catch a break, can it?
Anyway, the comments on the Peninsula Daily News article about the shooting are many, and interesting. Someone who seems like they were on their way to town posted the link below, which paints a none-too-pretty picture of Port Angeles, crime-wise. Even visitors are getting in on the act...
http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/wa/port-angeles/crime/
"Port Angeles really can't catch a break, can it?"
ReplyDeleteGiven all this town's been through and likely to go through, the curse hypothesis seems ever more likely.
I see that an 80 year old woman got assaulted on a Clallam Transit bus. It's been a hard week just for getting around in Clallam County, that's for sure. Kudos to the law enforcement officers and transit driver who have had to handle the insanity.
DeleteYou've gotta love Social Darwinism in action, especially in Port Angeles. Now if only Cherie Kidd would try to hijack a bus.
ReplyDeletePort Angeles burns while Kidd fiddles.
ReplyDeleteI actually first saw the story about the shoot out on Google News. The powers that be here can talk things up all they want, but it seems like the only time we get national attention is for shootings, bulldozer rampages, that sort of thing. It's another great day in Port Angeles.
ReplyDeleteYou can't buy publicity like that....
DeleteThe stats on the link CK provided are pretty sobering. Even if they're not entirely accurate, it's clear that Port Angeles is in pretty bad shape in terms of crime. Which makes sense, sadly. Poverty, drug abuse, crime, they all go hand in hand.
ReplyDeleteImagine the stats if white-collar crime were included.
DeleteAnonymous 2:09 PM, you make an EXCELLENT point. And think of all the places they intersect - like with Amber Steim and her penalty-free drunk driving and killing.
DeleteWho is Amber Steim and how is she connected to the power structure? I'm ignorant on this.
DeleteCaution, editorial opinion ahead: Amber Steim was, and is, an alcoholic white trash piece of slime who, some years ago, was sleeping with a Port Angeles police officer. That being so, when she hit and killed a woman, almost certainly while driving drunk, she was NOT given a sobriety test, or anything like it. She was not charged. The PAPD chalked it up as some sort of terrible accident.
DeleteSkipping forward a couple of years, once again, Amber Steim was out driving while drunk and hit and killed a SECOND person. That accident was bad enough that she couldn't walk away from it, but she did try to lie her way out of it. That didn't work.
Currently, slimy Steim is doing time (but not enough) for that second accident. But there might not have been a second accident at all if not for the fact that her sleeping with a member of the PAPD had protected her the first time around.
There are more details to it all, but I trust that gives you the gist of the story. Corruption embraced, lives lost.
And let's not forget Gaul Potleaf's penalty and sobriety test-free smashing of a pedestrian a few years back as well. No test, no charges, no problem for Gaul.
DeleteLook at the stories on the PDN website. All negative.
ReplyDeleteWho knew the arts festival was in town?
Positively Port Angeles? Positive that this town sucks, but the leadership just sticks their head in the sand, and fights to keep things the same.
As he old saying goes, "a fish rots from the head."
ReplyDeleteMeaning the "head" of this fish called greater Port Angeles is the leadership, such as it is. From the county commission to the city council to the port of port angeles to the economic development corporation, to the school board, to the downtown association to the port angeles business association to the Olympic medical center foundation-leadership sucks. The part I cannot understand is this: statistics show at least 20 to 25 percent of the adults around here have college degrees. Why aren't they putting up a stink about all the absolute incompetence around here? Did they just move here and decide to watch the fun and games and not attempt to do anything about the rotting fish? Then never mind the educated class, let's get these blue collar workers worked up about the constant deterioration of their job prospects and the piss poor wages available. With the money spend by these "leadership" there is no reason for there to be any poverty yet it surrounds us. Time for a local revolution--at the ballot box. This is an election year so let's be sure to throw the bums out and get a new class of leadership--those with the future of our children in mind.
Um, have you seen this year's pool of registered candidates? There will be no revolution until a real leader decides to run. Other threads here have ripped open the candidates' deficiencies, whicb are aplenty. County politics seems pre-ordained to stay pretty much the same - e.g., rely on government grants as a core economy, kiss EDC ass, never criticize the military for invading this peninsula, don't have any town halls, and skim, skim, skim on the sly.
DeleteThe eternal conundrum presented by Unearthed: who ya gonna call?
Luckily the parolled felon didn't gravely injure anyone. But the dollar damage done by the Walla Walla State Prison graduate is mind-boggling. Consider the cost to tax payers incurred-law enforcement and emergency staff time, helicopter shuttle to Seattle, medical care, pending court costs, lost productivity to those tangled in traffic....and this just due to one bad dude.
ReplyDeleteHe'll be doing time on your dime!
DeleteI thought the traffic getting out of town was bad that morning - took my wife and I nearly an hour to get from downtown to my storage unit on N. Larch, across from Mount Pleasant. The traffic coming into town was worse. Leaving the storage unit, I could smell Bibbsy's barbecue and wanted that for lunch, but my wife.... just doesn't get Texas BBQ - to her it's gotta be drenched in sauce. So we get to the highway, see the traffic and simultaneously say to each other "let's eat in Sequim". By the time we reached the end of the backup at O'Brien Road, we were pondering hitting a Walmart on the Kitsap Peninsula and buying pajamas while booking a hotel there online. We wound up having dinner in Silverdale, watched The Afrodisiacs play at the Clearwater Casino, made a quick (well, as quick as my limited-mobility wife can go) grocery stop at Central Market in Poulsbo, and got home a little after two. And I'm glad we stayed out as late as we did, because apparently the CSI's didn't close up shop and the highway fully reopen until around midnight. I can't imagine what the scene did to convince people to come back for Sunday - if ever again.
ReplyDelete