I am the chair of the landowners committee pushing for construction of the Port Hadlock sewer. I am very worried the county is getting set to undermine everything we’ve hoped for and the financial commitment we’re ready to make to build the sewer. We are seeing the signs of a bait-and-switch that will betray landowners and cripple the ability of the sewer to enable affordable housing and job creation.
The final design for the Port Hadlock Sewer is still being worked on. I would expect to see it completed early next year. It has been more than 15 years since Port Hadlock was declared an Urban Growth Area (UGA) under the Growth Management Act (GMA). That’s how long the sewer project has been in the works.
A sewer in Port Hadlock could allow our existing businesses to expand, plus there is enough land to attract other businesses and to build more housing. A sewer is the final element needed for full urban development in Port Hadlock.
This could be highly desirable and provide jobs, affordable housing and more revenue for government. But, it is highly dependent on the development that would be allowed under our Unified Development Code (UDC).
It should be noted that the UDC is a living document. By that I mean that it can be changed per a process in the Jefferson County Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan).
The Comp Plan is as close as Jefferson County gets to a constitution. It is the framework that the county uses to control growth. Any regulation that affects land use must be in harmony with the Comp Plan.
One issue with the new plan is how the sewer is to be constructed. Previously the sewer was going to use a gravity collection system and a fixed bio filtration system. The new plan is to use a pressure collection system and a modular bio filtration system. This was done to reduce costs and allow the sewer to be built.
This change in the sewer requires a change in the Comp Plan as the Comp Plan contains the wording for the approved sewer design. And here’s where this alarming problem has reared its head.
Cause for Concern
What’s happening, as I will explain, is that the very development density we need to provide affordable housing and increased commercial activity–the very density that will be needed so landowners can pay for the sewer–may be sacrificed for sake of open spaces and greenways that will take the place of apartments, parking lots and business buildings.
Here we go: Any changes to the Comp Plan must be initiated by a request from either an individual or a department of Jefferson County. The Jefferson County Department of Community Development (DCD) wrote such a request, dated March 2020 to the Board of County Commissioners, Planning Commission and other parties. This letter contained numerous items including item “3. Port Hadlock Sewer Redesign Comprehensive Plan Amendment” and item “5. Port Hadlock Urban Core Revitalization Subarea Plan.”
Item 3, as expected, was the sewer design changed to lower the cost of construction.
Item 5, however, is something completely different, and very concerning to landowners. Basically, the DCD is requesting that the existing development regulations for the sewered areas of Port Hadlock be changed.
Contained in item 5 is the following wording: “There is a likelihood that those zones anduses can be revised to reflect current conditions and aspirations for an attractive urban core, complete with design standards and considerations of developing public amenities such as multi-modal trails and sidewalks, outdoor recreation areas and areas for future residential and commercial development with an emphasis on environmental sustainability.”
What does this mean? It means that once the property owners commit to paying $15M for a sewer then the county can pull the rug out from under them and change the zoning to restrict their ability to use, develop and make some money from their land and sewer investment. Instead of dense residential development that will provide affordable housing in multi-story apartments, townhomes, tiny houses and row homes, the DCD wants more parks and undeveloped spaces where no one can live except in a tent.
The $15M is the amount that the property owners would pay and once they agree to a Local Improvement District (LID) there is no going back. The county can change the zoning afterwards to whatever it wants.
Not only did the DCD write the March 2020 letter but they wrote two others like it, showing how intent they are on zoning changes that will hurt landowners and cripple the sewer’s benefits. One was written August 11, 2020 and another on September 2, 2020. Basically, they reiterated their desire to change the existing zoning.
This action by the county could be quite detrimental to existing property owners. No one in their right mind would agree to a LID only to have their zoning change to something unknown. The whole point of the sewer is to allow urban zoning and urban development, not more “outdoor recreation areas.”
Please note thatthe DCD did not send this letter to any of the property owners in the area to get the sewer. In other words, the county did not deem it fit to let the people who would pay for the sewer know that they are planning on changing their zoning.
Jefferson County is already mostly characterized by green belts, forests and parks. Port Hadlock has parks that have been closed to the public. I speak of Chimacum Park that has been closed for years. There are other parks that have not been fully developed, such as Irondale Park, H.J. Carroll Park, Oak Bay Park and land where the log dump used to be.
What we need is land that can be developed to its maximum potential for housing, and commercial and industrial development. This is how jobs and housing are created and businesses expand.
This is not the time to add costs to our local businesses and handcuff them in their ability to develop their land to create affordable housing and jobs. Our job base is shrinking terribly, depriving young people of hope and futures. We have a real housing crisis. We need denser development on a new sewer system to have any hope of solving these crises. The current Port Hadlock Urban Growth Area zoning has already passed muster with the Growth Management Hearings board and should be retained as is.
When the Port Townsend School District reopened the doors in September 2020 my family opted out of in-classroom learning. We opted back in at the beginning of November. My youngest was happy to return to Blue Heron Middle School even if it was for only two days a week. She attended a total of five days before the school closed because of rising COVID cases in the county. Everybody went back to distance learning.
Call me a malcontent, call me cranky, or call me somebody who just wants something better for my kids. Over the last several months I have observed the process of online schooling with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I know the teachers are working as hard as they can with what they have. I would like them to see what I am seeing. Staring at a computer screen for most of the day is not good for my children. It is not helping with their social or physical development. It is not generating a desire to be lifelong learners.
I don’t have the ability to teach my children everything they need to know at this point in their education. I imagine many other parents feel the same. This will be a lost year for many students in our community.
I look for answers from administrators that are also trying really hard to find a way through this. They offer a barrage of explanations, including assurances that officials are talking with each other regularly, data is being compiled, and statistics are being analyzed. But no one can say exactly what the metrics are for the schools to reopen. Meanwhile our kids fall farther and farther behind.
I am sent lengthy policy statements and a decision tree laying out a pathway to reopening, detailing a process that, if followed to the letter, seems to be practically impossible.
Like many experiences in this year of “Just Shut Everything Down” I am left wondering what has happened to the can-do approach that used to exist in our culture.
Have we come to a point in history where our only option is to stay home and isolate because anything that might involve the slightest risk is too much of a liability for the powers that be?
I can’t fight the bureaucracy, but I can share the next best option. It is not my idea, but it is a concept that is gaining momentum nationally. I believe it deserves full consideration by our state legislature:
Families should immediately be provided with a refund—a prorated portion of the money that would have been spent by the state in which they reside and by their local school district from the beginning of March through the end of the school year.
Those dollars should be placed in a restricted-use education savings account that parents could use to pay for virtual tutors, online learning, textbooks, curriculums, diagnostic tests, and other products and services, in order to maintain education continuity for their children during this crisis.
School Districts Owe Parents A Covid-19 Refund, by Lindsey M. Burke Ph.D. writing for the Heritage Foundation.
Washington State’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has a biennial budget of tens of billions of dollars. If there is a surplus because the schools have been closed for most of the year, the funds should be returned to the parents to help them cover the cost of educating their children at home.
On Friday, December 12th, as a parent in the Port Townsend School District, I received this email from Sara Rubenstein, director of communications, telling me what the future holds.
On Wednesday afternoon Governor Inslee announced updated guidance for schools that may allow Port Townsend Schools to return to our blended learning model at some point in January or February, as well as resume some other school activities. We will make these changes no sooner than January 19th and most likely at the end of the semester if our county Health Department can support these changes. We will update families in early January as we see updated information on the case numbers and positivity rates after the holidays.
Maybe January 19, more likely the end of the semester – January 29th. maybe February. Maybe.
We have paid full fare for public schools and are receiving part-time learning. Our state representatives and the Superintendent of Public Instruction need to be told that the system is not working. They have the power and the responsibility to return any surplus funds. What we can do as parents is to make it clear to our elected officials that if they aren’t willing to find a better way to educate our children in a crisis, we are more than happy to lead the way.
R&R hall-of-famers Van Morrison and Eric Clapton team up for another
rollicking blast against senseless lockdown mania with “Stand and Deliver”!!!
You can can stream on major services or buy your own copy at: hhttps://amazon.com/Stand-Deliver-Clapton-feat-Morrison/dp/B08P6DBB3R
Read more from Van the Man about his lockdown protest songs and campaign to bring back live music at: vanmorrison.com
Not so cheery are rising reports of serious adverse effects from the
shiny new Pfizer vaccine. Dr. Vernon Coleman urgently warns that
2.8% of 112,807 UK first-dose vaccine recipients suffered Health
Impact Events (defined as “unable to perform normal daily activities,
unable to work, required care from doctor or health professional”): https://brandnewtube.com/watch/urgent-news-about-the-covid-19-vaccine_botqwzI8R7UUVY2.html
…since the 21,720 Pfizer vaccine takers suffered from “four related
serious adverse events”, 64 cases of lymphadenopathy, and 21% related
adverse events (compared to 0, 6, and 5% corresponding values from
placebo takers). Meanwhile there were 1 severe COVID-19 case among
the vaccine takers and 9 severe cases among the placebo takers. So
the net benefit from the vaccine is reducing 9 severe cases down to 5
severe cases, a statistically insignificant 0.02% benefit. More dramatic is the reduction from 162 to 8 non-severe cases, but that’s still only a 0.7% effect involving minor
symptoms. Costs include 21% related adverse events now plus unknown
long-term risks from the vaccine’s barely-tested new mRNA methodology.
BTW, former NY Times reporter Alex Berenson notes the CDC “is
reporting the number of vaccinations in near-real time. But they
AREN’T (as far as I can find) reporting the adverse events they
receive. We haven’t had an update on those since Friday. Way to build trust.” https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1341180058094997505
Unimaginable horrors taught my grandfather the power of Christmas. Vincenzo Scarantino was 18 years old in 1915 when police swept through his remote Sicilian village rounding up conscripts to throw against Austrian fortifications. He spent the rest of his youth in muddy or frozen trenches in a war waged so Italy could seize the port city of Trieste.
A million men were killed or wounded where my grandfather fought. The fighting along the Austrian front was almost continuous for three years. The Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo alone cost 280,000 dead, wounded or missing. My grandfather was there.
That photo above was taken during the war on the Carso Plateau, another place where my grandfather fought. My wife and I hiked the area and saw an exposed slope, ten stories high, where my grandfather’s battalion tried for years to take heights defended by machine guns and flame throwers. Trenches cut by hand into solid rock over a century ago are still up there. Rusted barbed wire will trip you. You can find air vents for bunkers under your feet. There’s a trail through the old battlefield marked with blood red paint splashed on limestone.
Mussolini built a memorial to the Isonzo’s war dead. He called it La Redipuglia. It cascades in massive concrete and marble steps down that ten-story slope. It holds the bones of over 100,000 soldiers, more than 60,000 of them unidentified.
Vincenzo told us once–my father translating to English from mountain Sicilian–of charging through smoke and artillery fire and noticing that the waves of men to his left and right had disappeared. Thinking he had fallen behind, he ran faster to catch up to the soldiers ahead. He discovered they were the remnants of another company. All the men he had started with had been mowed down by flanking fire.
My grandfather talked about being gassed. He had just enough time to fit a mask over his face. Slower reflexes and notoriously shoddy equipment doomed his comrades. Then the Austrians came. My grandfather pulled bodies of friends over himself. He held his breath as Austrians bayoneted his protective blanket of corpses.
He spoke of a lieutenant who always had a fancy cigarette holder between his teeth and was always eager to spend his men’s lives. This officer recklessly exposed himself above the earthworks. Waving his pistol, he demanded another headlong rush into machine gun fire. A sniper’s bullet knocked the cigarette holder–and the lieutenant’s teeth–out of his mouth. My grandfather smiled when he told that story. A single shot saved hundreds of lives that day.
Italian dead carpet an Isonzo battlefield after a failed attack
My grandfather said the world had gone crazy. He used the Sicilian word, “matto,” which translates roughly to “deranged” or “criminally insane.”
What some may view as the craziest incident in this meaningless war was the only thing that made any sense to my grandfather.
One Christmas day the guns fell silent.
Unlike the 1914 Christmas truce in France, no formal cease-fire had been negotiated on the Italian-Austrian front. Men just stopped killing each other. My grandfather and his buddies nervously crawled out of their trenches, then stood up and walked unarmed in No Man’s Land.
The soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire also took the risk that Christmas morning. Adversaries met in the open. The Sicilians didn’t speak German, or Magyar, Czech, Serbian, Croat, Albanian, Slovenian or Polish. Many didn’t even speak Italian. But both sides knew the melodies of Christmas carols. Words in the languages of a polyglot empire matched lyrics that sounded more Arabic than Latin. Men raised their voices to celebrate an equally crazy idea, that God stepped into our deranged, broken world as a helpless baby and that His incarnation through human birth could mean the world’s peace and salvation.
The soldiers shared cigarettes. They embraced and wished each other well. As dusk fell they returned to their slits in the ground. The next day generals ordered them to get back to killing each other. The men had to fight. Italian officers enforced discipline with the Roman practice of decimation: They shot every tenth man in reluctant units.
That order to resume the killing may have done more damage to my grandfather than anything else he experienced in the war. Miraculously, he was never seriously physically injured. But I remember him in the middle of the night screaming, sweating, and shaking. My father saw the same things when he was a boy. He says my grandfather never got over being forced to kill men he had hours before embraced as his Christian brothers.
Vincenzo later worked in Pennsylvania’s coal mines. Men again died around him. He had survived bullets and bombs and phosgene gas, followed by cave-ins and fires, to be killed by tiny particles of coal dust in his lungs.
In helping me research my grandfather’s story, my father dug out Vincenzo’s Bible (in Italian, not a word of English). Between the pages of the Gospels telling us about Christ’s birth he found prescriptions for laudanum, a potent opiate once used to numb “shell shock,” what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder.
I’ve been wondering why my grandfather filed unused prescriptions in his Bible. I imagine him studying slips of paper promising temporary relief from the horrors in his head. Then I see him opening his Bible and tucking prescriptions he knew offered no real cure among pages telling an eternal story of hope arriving in a most unexpected form.
I like to think that my grandfather found peace among those worn pages, and in the memory of one sane moment in a world gone mad.
Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth. Or, as Vincenzo Scarantino would say, “Buon Natale!”
[Another version of this story, “Haunted by a Battlefield Christmas,” was published by The Albuquerque Journal, December 25, 2008.]
Drugs, violence, crime, overdoses, chronic alcoholism, medical emergencies…and madness.
Port Townsend police generated over 250 pages of reports on calls to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds from March through October 2020. The incidents range from calls to help one of the homeless/transients at the sprawling encampment find their birth certificate to rescuing a man who stood intentionally in a bonfire he had set himself to breaking up fights and executing felony arrest warrants.
The reports were provided to Port Townsend Free Press by a neighbor of the Fairgrounds who had submitted their own public records request.
Recent tent additions creeping closer to apartments.
The encampment started early in the COVID days with people paying to stay in the campsites. When the shelter downtown closed and after people were moved out of the substitute shelter at the Oskar Ericsen building, the camp grew. When Governor Inslee prohibited evictions the camp grew even more. It has now at least doubled in size. None of the homeless/transients are paying for their campsite, use of the bathrooms and showers and SaniKan (which are cleaned at least daily for them by the Fairgrounds Association) or the electricity travelling through the extension cords snaking across the muddy field.
The exact number of people living in the encampment is undetermined as there is no requirement to check in. People just show up in ever larger numbers. Bayside Housing is bringing 35 dinners each night. This author estimates the number is far higher as the camp continues to grow and has birthed a satellite encampment on another section of the Fairgrounds.
Partial view of encampment
One person there accounts for the largest number of incident reports. He is a danger to people in the neighborhood as well as others at the Fairgrounds. Some other names keep showing up in the reports. Some people have moved on, like the man airlifted to Harborview after an overdose. Many of the reports reveal multiple police officers and cars tied up at the Fairgrounds for hours at a time.
The problems requiring police response have continued beyond the cut-off for this batch of records. We reported on November 23 an incident where a neighbor was accosted before dawn at his house by the violent man mentioned in the preceding paragraph. On December 8, when this author was at the Fairgrounds, so were three police cars and an ambulance. There was a fight the weekend of December 11-12. And on December 14 three police cars were again at the fairgrounds as a fight broke out. Port Townsend Free Press will follow up this report after we receive police records for the remainder of 2020.
Following is a sample of what police have been dealing with.
Madness and Mental Illness
May 11: Mental health pickup. Subject offered resistance and started harming himself. Refused to exit patrol car and it took multiple officers to get him out and into the hospital. Police assisted in restraining him until sedated. The report states that this man “is gravely disabled. Unable to care for basic human needs.”
September 15: A resident of the apartments to the south of the Fairgrounds called 911 to report that someone in the camp had a bonfire with flames ten feet high. Something just exploded, the caller told the 911 operator. And a man was standing in the fire. When police arrived they saw a man building the fire larger and then stepping into the flames. Officers pulled him out and called for an ambulance. The man was “very elevated,” an officer reported.
October 27: The camp manager called police to report that a woman he had not seen before was in the bathroom and refusing to leave. She had been in the shower for 2 to 3 hours. She was in there screaming. When police contacted her she again refused to get out of the shower. She told them she “had to get rid of mites” and that she had been waiting for someone to bring her a towel. Officers observed that she was bitten all over her body. They got her out of the shower but she refused all other aid. They helped her back to her van and told her she could be trespassed (barred from the campground) if she repeated that conduct. They called the Department’s Navigator on her behalf in hopes maybe he could get her some help.
October 16: A resident near the Fairgrounds saw a man, known to police from many encounters at the Fairgrounds, attempting to conceal himself in bushes off the Fairgrounds and videotaping him. Later, while walking Cappy’s Trails the same man emerged and followed him. The resident told police he was very concerned for his safety.
October 21: A neighbor outside the Fairgrounds called to report that she had been followed on a walk by a man who previously had been at their house yelling at her husband to “stop putting things on the Internet.” When she encountered him on a trail he started yelling at her. She told police she was scared for her life. (This is the same man in the October 16 incident. This man generated around two dozen police responses, including his own complaints of being under attack and having items stolen. This is the same man who confronted a neighbor blocks away at 6 a.m. in that neighbor’s own yard, claiming that he lived there. See our 11/23/20 report, “Fairgrounds’ Neighbor’s Plea to County Commissioners About Dangers From The Homeless Encampment.”)
Ruined tent, abandoned mattress and trash in center of camp
May 19: Police contacted a man who claimed “there were people around who would not let him out of his tent.” No one was seen around his tent. He complained there were people chasing him and “out to kill him.” This happened whenever he drank alcohol. In this case he imagined two men attacking him after drinking, he said, only two tall beers. He had made other calls to police about people out to kill him, all of which had been found to be baseless. “At this point,” an officer wrote, “his fear of people trying to kill him, along with a large fixed blade he carries, makes me concerned that he may mistake an innocent person for an assailant and attack them.” This man had an open therapeutic court warrant but due to COVID restrictions the jail would not take him. “At this point there is little we can do,” the officer concluded. (This man may have left the camp. He does not reappear in subsequent reports.)
Violence and Crime
May 11: Neighbor called about hearing yelling, screaming, sounds of fighting. “They are going to kill each other.” Police responded. One man had invaded another’s tent, they fought and tent was damaged. “________ is getting more out of control and will eventually have to be placed in jail or put on a mental hold,” an officer wrote.
May 20: Police assisted “community partner” in collecting belongings of man arrested that day at Penny Saver.
May 21: Man assaulted female camper and was arrested. While in back of patrol car he started self-harming, banging his head as he was being transported to jail.
June 2: Man “trespassed” (banned) from Fairgrounds for committing assault.
June 3: Neighbor who walks the area reported seeing stripped bicycle parts every day, and people from the campground walking around “carrying sticks.” He feared for his safety and asked if he could open carry a handgun for personal protection. He requested police presence and patrols. (In our 10/29/20 “Transient/Homeless Village Grows at Fairgrounds,” according to the campground manager, 50-100 bikes have appeared at the Fairgrounds. Some get thrown in the dumpster.)
June 18: Officer tracked down stolen phone to man in encampment.
June 22: Check fraud reported, but victim grew belligerent toward officer, calling him “fascist” and refused help.
June 23: Two individuals wanted on felony warrants had been at campground but had left when police arrived.
October 15: The same man in the October 17 and 21 incidents, lunged at a man in the Fairgrounds bathroom and told him “you’re lucky I didn’t kill you.” The aggressive man had previously spit on this man.
October 19: This same man got in an argument with a person who lives near the Fairgrounds, and later punched him as he was walking his dog.
May 9: Police were called in response to fighting between men. An officer observed flies on one man’s sock, and that his ankle was swollen and oozing liquid. The foot was gangrenous. Though the man did not want help, the officer had him transported to the hospital.
September 7: Police were called with report of a woman beating up a man. She had fled by the time they arrived. The male victim gave a fake name and produced false identification, but was correctly identified and found to be wanted on a felony warrant. He was taken into custody.
September 10: Two men were fighting against one man over a camping space.
August 21: A neighbor called 911 to report sounds of fighting and screaming.
August 19: A neighbor called, hearing sounds of fighting and yelling, things being thrown. Police arrived and found there had been a conflict over placement of a bike.
August 14: Someone invaded a woman’s tent and threw her out.
July 21: Caller reported a car chasing another car through the Fairgrounds at a high rate of speed and a collision. The camp manager reported that those involved were new to the camp.
July 3: Neighbor called to report clearly hearing a gun shot from inside the Fairgrounds.
August 31: Squatters had moved into an abandoned trailer. One was heard bragging about breaking into a vegetable stand pay box. [A letter read aloud at a County Commissioners meeting was from the owner of the vegetable stand who reported the theft and other problems with people from the Fairgrounds encampment].
August 31: Fairgrounds Association pay box broken into. $300-$400 stolen and the box had to be replaced.
September 29: Women’s purse with her medications stolen from her pickup truck.
Drugs and Alcohol
June 8: Fairgrounds called about a woman parked in prohibited area. Officer found her sleeping in a car in middle of day, with syringe on ground by driver’s door.
June 15: “Extremely” drunk habitual drinker, being belligerent, staggering, resisting police. Had been kicked out of the homeless shelter.
June 17: Habitual drinker from campground drove to nearby house and was in driveway. Extremely drunk. Had urinated on himself. He resisted arrest and fought police, injuring the arresting officer.
July 6: Apparent overdose. Man found in car “unresponsive and catatonic, had very strong, rapid pulse but shallow breathing.” Life Flight called for air lift. Anti-overdose injection given [exact substance redacted in records released]. No effect noted as the officer grew more concerned. As officer was getting ready for next injection, the man came around. Transported for medical attention.
July 22: Man under influence of drugs or alcohol in distress, vomiting, choking. Other campers were irate and yelling at police. CPR administered. Life Flight called for air lift but could not fly due to weather. Police turned him over to medics.
August 24: Paying camper who stayed two nights called police to report seeing “a lot” of drug activity at two specific camping spaces. One person was serving as a look out while the other did business. She also reported hearing “suspicious communications about taking over the place.”
September 22: Neighbor reported syringe on ground just outside Fairgrounds. Retrieved by officer.
October 21: Known habitual drinker found passed out on track. Could not be wakened. “In his usual intoxicated state,” wrote officer. Left him with water and Gatorade.
Other Incidents
March 9: A trailer was fully engulfed in fire, but the flames were suppressed before a propane tank exploded. The occupant, wheelchair bound, had been rescued by neighbor who heard him shouting for help and then moved his own RV before it caught fire. Report does not state cause of fire, but a later report has police looking for a resident of the campground who was seen outside at the burned trailer immediately before it ignited. [Fairgrounds Association incurred a charge of $5,000 to have the burned trailer removed.]
May 27: Man banging cans, acting crazy and throwing garbage into street.
May 30: Campground called police about woman observed with with facial sores. Officer reports she had “a massive infection in her chin the size of a golf ball” and needed medical treatment.
In addition to what is covered by date here, over the period of seven months neighbors made frequent calls about hearing sounds of fighting, screaming, loud music and “sex noises.” Police made numerous calls simply to serve the mentally ill as substitute case workers, to get them to their camp and off the street, look for a lost wallet or birth certificate, to calm them, to check on their welfare and provide some kind of medical service, such as getting them inhalers or an Epipen to counteract a bee sting. Police also made a point of frequently conducting vehicle and foot patrols.
New arrivals at Fairgrounds encampment 12/16/20
The Word Is Out
I have reported here and at the Port Townsend Free Press Facebook page how the camp has continued to grow as people from outside our community have gotten word that they can stay there for free, get a free hot meal, free showers and bathroom facilities (with janitorial service), and free electricity and not be hassled about squatting. The word is out, as confirmed by a call the police received from a transient who has moved to Port Townsend from outside the area. He called the Department saying he had “heard about a new kind of homeless encampment at the Fairgrounds and would like to know all about it.”
The man wanting to learn “all about” the “new kind of homeless encampment at the Fairgrounds” was one of the individuals police stopped from beating a man to death in Kah Tai Park. We wrote about that incident in “A Bloody Afternoon in Kah Tai Park.” He has an extensive criminal record here and elsewhere.
