Update: A BHS senior was arrested this morning on felony malicious mischief charges in connection with the vandalism of several Bainbridge Island police cars early Wednesday morning. “Other arrests are expected,” according to the Kitsap Sun. Click here for the Sun’s report.
This week’s vandalism of several Bainbridge police cars, including one parked outside the residence of Police Chief Matt Haney, was angry, aggressive and personal. It was directed at the most visible symbol of authority and order in our community, and an obscene gesture to the whole island. Everyone–especially other high school students–hopes the perpetrators are quickly caught and prosecuted.
Wednesday night, a visibly shaken Chief Haney recounted some of the details of the crime to the City Council. He said that between 2 and 3 a.m. that morning, tires on 8 police vehicles were flattened, including all four on his own, which was parked at his Bainbridge home. Several colors of paint were splashed over the vehicles, and Haney estimated the damage at about $15,000.
The Council reacted emotionally to his report. Councilman Chris Snow’s voice shook with anger as he declared, “I’m just outraged by this.” He said he’s lived all over the world, including places where police were targets of crime and doesn’t want to live in a town like that. Calling for a community conversation, he said this kind of incident ”has come to characterize our community.”
I recognize Snow’s anger because I’ve said similar things with the same trembling voice in my own home to my own kids. I have two BHS grads and a third graduating next year, sons with big personalities and independent minds. They’ve driven me to helpless, sputtering rage more times than I want to remember.
Helpless is the key word here. Sure, the community, like individual parents, can punish specific acts of wrongdoing. But any honest parent can tell you that preventing future departures from family and community norms is painfully impossible.
Argue if you want. Tell me about deterrence and beefed up security and whatever else you can think up. The facts will shout you down. This vandalism was done in the police department parking lot and at the Police Chief’s house. How much more police presence can you have?
People have already started to see this incident not as it actually is, but as a symbol for what ails our island. In the coming weeks we’ll bring our agendas and biases to conversations and meetings, both public and private, and blame our favorite scapegoats: permissive parents, spoiled kids, flawed schools, heavy-handed police, lack of security, lack of trust, too much privilege, not enough respect, corporate America, and the war in Iraq.
It’s as if we can’t bear, even briefly, to feel the helplessness an act like this engenders.
Most of the time the rule of law works. When it doesn’t, especially in a community blessed with so little crime, it leaves us frantic to recover our sense that life works the way we want.
But maybe that was a false sense to begin with. We’ve had repeated and sometimes tragic reminders in the past few years that there’s a lot we can’t control when it comes to our kids. We’ve seen serious car accidents, far too much underage drinking, bullying, sexual assaults. When these incidents go public, the community springs into action. We write letters to the editor. We form task forces and coalitions. We hold parent forums. We judge and criticize and argue. And life goes on. Kids keep doing what they do.
We can deal swiftly and firmly with people who break the rules. But changing the course of teen history on Bainbridge Island…well, it hasn’t happened yet in spite of years of good-hearted efforts. My experience with my own kids, as well as on some of those forums and task forces, taught me the futility and foolishness of making enraged promises to Crack Down so this kind of thing Never Happens Again. Getting older is the only reliable cure for youth.
We have things to talk about of course. There are plenty of complaints on all sides of the law enforcement equation. I’ve heard police officials criticize island teens and their permissive parents. I’ve heard lots of kids (and some parents) say the police unfairly and indiscriminately target teenagers.
Maybe, with some conversation, we’ll discover that the truth is more nuanced and varied. Most kids are hard-working, compassionate, and law abiding. Island parents run the gamut from those who still make their 18-year-olds come home by 11 p.m. on weekends, to those whose homes are well-known party houses.
And for every complaint I’ve heard about unreasonable cops, I’ve heard a story about an officer giving a ride home to a stranded teen, or letting a youthful traffic law violator off with a call to the parents and a warning. I’ve even seen officers good-naturedly playing along with a group of teens on a treasure hunt.
Rather than cracking down on kids–which is a one-way conversation owned and operated by adults–I wonder if some informal discussions among police, students and parents might be in order, to get to know each other better, and maybe do some fence-mending. How about some regular brown bag sessions between cops and kids at BHS next year? Bacon bowls? How about exploring former Police Chief Bill Cooper’s idea about community policing, a specific kind of program founded on collaboration between the community and the police?
Of course, kids who might be the vandals next time are probably the least likely to participate in any community effort to reach them before the fact. We might have to get used to a little helplessness. Life happens, even on Bainbridge Island.
Councilwoman Hilary Franz will begin a conversation about the vandalism at Monday’s Community Relations Committee. You can bring your ideas and concerns to the meeting at City Hall, from 10 a.m. to noon.
About a month ago, I offered to permanently donate my television and DVD player for a younger kids, and a PG-13 movie hour; which could be sponsored or supervised by a police officer, trainee, a teacher – anyone who might serve as a good role model.
This suggestion went unanswered without even a whisper. Instead, at Island Terrace Apartments, we have a “community room” that I have have never seen used in three years. I have seen the blinds raised once in the “services” office.
I am just wondering how much law and order we can expect if we do not systematically provide community and offer good role models (up close – not posters) as examples. It’s not enough to say, “We did it once, and now we’re done”.
I am personally sickened by these events. They are the symptoms of an ill community, and marginally or not, this is where I live – but that doesn’t mean the first politically elected official to agree or say “we are ailing” is immune from the illness, or had no part in its cause.
I wonder, what is the cost comparison for one new patrol car + one officer + benefits + insurance for patrolling the midnight streets against vandals, vs. the cost of two DVD’s/week + volunteer time to build trust with couple dozen individuals hungry for good role models ( I didn’t say social workers, or someone recruiting for their church).
I have never seen an ill person in an old hospital suddenly recover, because they were transferred to a new hospital. There are no sudden recoveries for a serious illness. There is only the slow, careful, hard work of healing.
I don’t condone the vandalism, but given what I have heard about the police department’s hostile attitude towards youth in general, I can see why it was directed against them. Like the Watt’s riots, I hope that message of the vandalism and violence does not get lost in the outrage over the actions.
Given the fact that the police chief’s car was damaged at his residence, there was some forethought to the vandalism.
I feel there isn’t too much to talk about (other than express community outrage) until the alleged criminals talk and hopefully give a reason for their actions. At this point, I don’t even know if they were angry at the local police for some unknown reason (like, perhaps, cracking down on teen drinking and drugs), or if they might have been paid by someone to get back at the Bainbridge police.
The community simply lacks the facts at this point. Since this is likely to be a felony charge, I doubt the facts will be revealed to the CRC on Monday.
I understand the frustration with bi teenagers and the bipd. I felt they were always after us, even when we tried to do innocent adventures- they were on us like glue. When I left the island and went to college, I took a long, deep, breath of relief for my new bipd-free world.
**I respect police and public property…but I don’t respect people in uniforms telling us they can ruin our futures if they want to- bipd power trip over teens like you’d never believe.
The Mayor and the City should concentrate on cleaning up their own mess. Many citizens on Bainbridge feel equally vandalized and violated by what is going on in city hall. The outrage by citizens of the misuse of authority and mismanagement of our resources trickles down to our youth. Until honorable leadership is in charge of this city, conversation at the CRC is nothing but hypocritical.
How our community evolves is in direct relationship to how our government functions or is not functioning based on many key indicators. Such as the number of lawsuits, the financial mess, the use of government resources to benefit a few at the expense of many.
There are many citizens and property owners who look at life on Bainbridge as a money making event, instead of a community. Greed has become the over riding theme of Bainbridge Island and what drives city hall and the police department. Currently it drowns out those attempting to make a home and raise a family on the Island.
A young adult was arrested, more arrests follow. Consequences will follow that. What more is needed? People like Snow need to get a grip. Meanwhile, let’s hope he was serious about moving; Singapore sounds like his sort of place.
I took a moment while unpacking. Weather in SLC is great. Petitio has everything under control. I’ll say this from a safe distance:
It’s like one big codependent family that doesn’t want to solve their problems so some unwitting individual(s) draws the short straw:
And the short-straws stir up the kids (those darn kids). They are to blame for everything; but especially the rising cost of education, food; and if design is so intelligent then why do those (darn kids) keep needing so many new pairs of shoes?
It has to be the kids. Now, I’m trying to remember… their graduation presents. Oh, right! Is that $450,000 per household with new bonding/taxing – I completely forgot (those darn kids, every time I think of debt, I think of them. What do we need a younger generation, anyway?)
It was something about a budget, accountable government, revenues, how much is enough, community inclusiveness, and we were going to give our Council a breather to…
now I forgot, again. Those darn kids.
Althea, your thoughtful analysis and observations on parenting and the community never fail to inspire me. Even better, you often ricochet me right back in time to the years when I lived with two sons of independent thought and sometimes reckless action. Even now, your wisdom and compassion far outstrip mine.
Thank you, for all that you bring to all of us.
Mr. Schumpeter, you are priceless.
Althea, thank you for your thoughful comments on this whole mess.
Frankly, I am a bit tired of people making excuses for the miscreants.
This vandalism occurred on almost the same day that I was out of town talking with a friend about his next career steps. He was educated at Harvard and then taught teenagers in high school, becoming a popular teachter before going on to Berkeley to get his law degree at Boalt Hall. Having grown frustrated with the practice of law, he is thinking about what he does next.
I was suggesting that he do something with teens in society. Quite frankly, our society is mostly hostile to children. Our city administrators and the insurance companies they answer to are so risk averse that they’ve taken all the fun out of playgrounds. We ghetto-ize the pre-teens with a skate board park at Strawberry Hill that they must be driven to to use, and we make a sport out of complaining about teenagers. Let’s face it, here on Bainbridge we have defined the “work” of teens as getting into the best college they can, so that they can leave the island within three months. Their reward comes down to an envelope in the mail. We talk about internships and integrating them in our adult society, but offer them virtually no way to connect in society.
And so I suggested to my friend that he use the law to find a way to better integrate children, to really make them a part of society. Otherwise they are simply becoming a “cost center” whose need for schools and community centers competes with affordable housing, open space and senior centers.
My friend had an almost instant response: he said that kids, particularly those approaching adolescents, are looking for something larger than themselves so that they can connect and be a part of society, that the way to get to them is to inspire them with the possibility of participation in these works, on things like the re-building of Yeomalt Cabin. And his almost-instant-follow-up was that when kids can’t make their mark positively in society, they do so negatively, they tag. That one way or another they find a way to express themselves in society.
And let’s be honest: our society here aint so healthy. Many of the adults spend 12 hours away from the island working. Brent Patterson told me that in statistical terms our socio-economic profile and teen drug use are not so different than Bellevue’s, except that the parents are gone a lot more! And our government, the government that oversee the police department, is disfunctional. And so I was not entirely surprised when one or more student vandals made their mark on the most visible symbol of adult society and power, the police department. Leaving aside the issue of the paint damage, leave it to the creativity of a teenager to attack the most visible symbol of the power of the adult world by literally taking the air out of the tires of a police car. The teenager’s world is governed by informal social acceptance. But we refuse to socially accept them. We need to find a way to accept teens as they are, and give them an opportunity to express themselves. That can start in a number of ways. One of those ways is making our island government more effective, more responsible, and friendlier to teens. At the beginning of the week, in the City Council retreat, Chris Snow made a very strong comment that the City of Bainbridge Island has too much citizen involvement, that we should cut this back.
At the end of the week he was expressing outrage over the teens behavior. Gee, Chris, do you see any connection between your attitudes and what is happening in the community?
I was sent the link leading to this blog from one of your BI residents who has a vested interest in bringing solutions to your community.
As a former law enforcement officer (tonight writing from GA and having attended a powerful weekend seminar based upon Dr. Greg Baer’s book Real Love and Freedom for the Soul–Breaking the Chains of Victimhood) I would invite the BI community at large, and the BI government in particular, to invite Dr. Baer to address the resentments and subsequent anger which appear to have come to a ‘rolling boil’ in your community.
I am also a personal friend and professional acquaintance of Garvin DeShazer, a founding member of Be The Change, a youth-focused program which collaborates with Challenge Day (another high school student-targeted program featured on Oprah).
Between the efforts of Real Love, Be The Change, and Challenge Day perhaps a peaceful relationship can be ‘brokered’ between the BI youth, parents, and law enforcement community.
Finger-pointing is a waste of time and energy. Until one can correctly ‘diagnose the cause of any dis-ease’, arresting the ’symptoms’ is not productive.
Sincerely,
Andy
According to the web page City Directory, we have no police force. I am disconcerted. Is our police force incommunicado? I misunderstand, is it safer to keep these contacts under lock and key? Well, no wonder we have unusual forms of communication, if no communication is possible…
I wanted to communicate directly with… well, without a directory, I am not exactly sure. Who? I guess it’s the Mayor and the City Council, although I am not sure why. Do we have a police commissioner? Anyway, I had hoped to politely deliver a question. Now it seems like I am trying to bust down the doors to City Hall:
Dear Honorable Bainbridge Mayor Kordonowy and Honorable Council Members:
I have been informed, via emergency electronic communications with my County Area Agency on Aging offices, that I would reasonably be expected to telephone the police, if Island Terrace Apartments attempts to take or dispose of any of my personal possessions.
Unfortunately, there have been instances in the past where I think our local Police Department was played “middle man out” by State agencies and Apartment management.
As potentially harmful as frustrated responses may become to me – simply because I do not receive service which I was instructed to request – I find it more difficult to fault any person in a subordinate capacity of employment who is not given sufficient background or training to resolve matters with least exposure to our City and most possible satisfaction to all parties. No wonder the Fire Department gets all the praise!
I have asked, but not the proper way, apparently. Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA) recommends as best practices, encouraging the communicatively disabled to use pencil and paper. This has not worked or seemed necessary. Nonetheless, if Apartment management begins throwing away my bicycle or carefully tended potted plants (which are neither feeding, hiding or encouraging rats); then I am not convinced my personal property, or my rights will be sufficiently protected by calling our local Bainbridge Island Police – to whom I am grateful for many things here on our Island.
In the absence of an affirmative response or some kind of reassurance that reasonable accommodation is possible with our local Police Department, I will telephone and request the Washington State Police make a report of any incident(s). In advance, I am grateful for your continuing efforts to do your best on behalf of us all. Steven Ziolkowski (e. signature under RCW & WAC for NSA via TTY & email).
I see it! Alphabetically, first, Planning and; second, Community; third, Development (PCD) – then, Police Department! Under, first Mayor/Executive; and second, Department.
I get it. Cognitively normal people alphabetize M, E, D, P, C, D, P. I get it! Thanks for your patience with me.
Maybe Mr. Beavis and I have the record for most consecutive postings.
It’s always important to give credit where credit is due, and sincere effort is made. A kind letter was sent to me by our Police Department informing me of best ways to make contact.
This was reassuring in many ways. Also, it gave me an opportunity to explain that the legal assistive technology I use, used by thousands of disabled Washingtonians and millions of disabled Americans, does not allow me to just dial “911″.
There’s something to think about. That great invention, 911, may be unavailable to some of the people who might need it most. But you just never know ’til you ask, Sparky.
I’m real pleased with the response I got. Warm fuzzies to BIHSS. Don’t know how to share the warmth. Keep trying to open mutually respectful lines of communication. It’s skeerie, but important for us all.
[Please forgive the length of this post. I simply could not decide what should be taken out.]
The Bainbridge Notebook on 6/13 reads, “Councilman Chris Snow’s voice shook with anger as he declared, ‘I’m just outraged by this.’ Calling for a community conversation, he said this kind of incident ”has come to characterize our community.” I’m not sure what Chris means by saying it “has come to characterize our community” for this event seems like a “first” and has gained a lot of community attention as a result.
I’m not surprised though. Nor outraged or “sickened” like some. I get sickened when a teen wraps h/herself around a tree as two girls did three days on BI on Aug 20 & 23, 2004, or when one deliberately takes their life as we’ve experienced annually for the last ten plus years. THAT is truly sickening stuff.
Yet alas, these seem to get tossed off as “a handful of someone else’s kids making bad choices, not our responsibility … and “yesterday’s news.” So here we are once again, this time with BIPD as a target.
Will we look deeper as a community this time to see if there is a message to be heard? OR, once again take moral high ground, become indignant, view this merely as an “incident” for which kids and parents are to blame, and with our adult power seek to soundly “punish” those bad kids?
Fasten your seatbelts, folks, I’m “glad” this happened – which is not to say I condone vandalism. I don’t. I simply prefer not to play ostrich by setting the responsibility solely with kids or their parents. Instead, I see this as an ENORMOUS invitation with HUGE possibility for growth as a community – IF we’ll see and embrace it as a community issue.
Let’s look at this word ”community.” At the April 08 Seattle Festival, Mark Anielski, author of “Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth” (and close friend of BI’s Giff and Libba Pinchot, Founders of Bainbridge Graduate Institute), asked, “Where is the ‘community’ in our communities?”
Now if you just turned down the volume because you see “community” flourishing on BI, it may be difficult to hear what follows, much less respond to the pressing “disconnect” and loss of intimacy many agree is happening here. Whether or not this exists in Bellevue or anywhere else is beside the point. Sure it does. But “here” is what we are and have an immediate need, responsibility and possibility to address.
Rod Stevens notes BIHS principal, Brent Peterson told him, “in statistical terms our socio-economic profile and teen drug use are not so different than Bellevue’s, except that the parents are gone a lot more!” I don’t know about you, but this rings to me of what kids so often say when pleading, “So and so is doing it! Why can’t I?”
Brent was also quoted in the Review or Islander a couple years ago as saying, “BIHS is the ‘gate-keeper’ of 5400 people in this community!” Again, I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a lot of control to me. Yet recent events over the past four years alone suggest something in BIHS’s “gate-keeping” may need attention.
With regard to this incident, bashing teens, parents, schools OR police doesn’t help. What DOES is to reach beyond knee-jerk denial, self-protection and failed self-reflection to consider that yes, “It DOES take a whole village to raise a child – and “YES – ‘we’ (including the BISD and BIPD) have a growing issue to address here.
The “gift” of this vandalism is that it affords an opportunity to newly look at our selves. If we can do this with transparent honesty in homes, schools, business, government and BIPD to reveal what is amiss here and there, we will redirect the stream of incidents growing in severity of late that we’ve so readily tossed off as mere “un-related bad choices by a small handful of misguided kids.” If we don’t, we’ll surely experience more of the same until we do – and with increase in severity.
This is simply how life works. Without successful intervention, any element out of balance is progressive and eventually “terminal.” Thus, imbalanced energy will always come out “sideways,” no matter how much punitive action is applied. Only until the heart of the matter is identified and remedied can we gain a different result.
I am quite moved by H20’s comment – “I understand the frustration with bi teenagers and the bipd. I felt they were always after us, even when we tried to do innocent adventures- they were on us like glue. When I left the island and went to college, I took a long, deep, breath of relief for my new bipd-free world. ** I respect police and public property…but I don’t respect people in uniforms telling us they can ruin our futures if they want to – bipd power trip over teens like you’d never believe.”
Anyone else hear heartfelt sincerity there? Anyone doubt it may offer a message worth examining, especially noting this is not the first time we’ve heard it from youth and adults? I just heard it once again from a mom who’s put one kid through BIHS with two more still there. Our kids keep asking us to listen. Are we?
Looking a bit broader, it would appear that just as the misled, misleading “Winslow Tomorrow” avarice of COBI has had its “wake-up call” of sorts this vandalism invites a similar one for BI as a once intimate “community.” At the place where home, school and community meet, would it not now be smart to examine what our context, priorities and behavior have been?
A recent three-part guest column series in the Bainbridge Islander spoke of campus violence and the process by which a community moves beyond mere hit-list “warnings” and bomb making materials to actual tragic events. We have a tendency to view such events as the independent work of a handful of individuals making bad choices rather than look to underlying driving forces and progression within the community.
I believe this is a mistake. I believe any community experiencing a school shooting, as an example, first developed a “climate” or “culture” from which this event eventually sprang. At this level, resolution of the culture is not a mere matter of punishment or seeking to better identify at-risk offenders. It involves a serious look at the community as a system.
Over the past four or more years, a number of creative, well-designed attempts have been made to deliver this message to the BISD and BIPD by numerous well-educated parents and community members. Two resulted in the creation of Imagine Bainbridge and Just Know Coalition. BISD was also encouraged to bring to its campuses one of the most prominent school-based programs in the nation shown to successfully address the underlying “disconnect” from which self-harm, bullying, teasing, stereo-typing, violence, substance abuse and suicide arise. A BIHS health class has shown a video of the program for years to numerous students who then expressed interest to experience it – before it was presented on the Oprah Winfrey Show with Oprah saying, “This could heal the world!”
During these four years, BIHS was also informed in 2005 of a teen who wrote an English paper on how to make a bomb, witnessed the next year teens who set off one blowing a whole in a roadway, witnessed the next a teen who made a “hit list” and had bomb making materials at home … and just two weeks ago on June 7 experienced the detonation of a bomb in a portable toilet adjacent to BIHS’s baseball field. A progression here?
The BIPD has also been encouraged to examine its culture, both as a result of informal complaints and court actions, and by suggestion of some alternatives – most recently to change its name (label) to “The Department of Peace and Public Safety” and embrace a pioneering re-training opportunity facilitated by a 14-year veteran police officer and uncover narcotics agent that could help redirect its existing culture.
So here we look at the vandalizing of police cars in 2008 – a mid night act demonstrating enough planning and ingenuity to flatten tires of nine cars community-wide, including that of the police chief outside his own home. Embarrassing? Yes. Mindless vandalism? Maybe. Maybe not.
Seems a pretty deliberate effort was taken to target the BIPD, was it not? They didn’t target the school, buses or taxi cabs. No, someone mustered some pretty serious intention to courageously go after local police. SO, If we have any sincere interest in getting to the truth of the matter, might we look there? Are we willing to move past denial and “protecting our own” to consider just maybe, there may be a legitimate gripe there (one clue perhaps being the comment by H20)? Are we listening?
As outrageous as this may sound to some, I’m reminded of another act of vandalism 235 years ago on December 16, 1773 by John Hancock and Samuel Adams who played principal roles in dumping 47 tons of British taxed tea into the Boston Harbor. (They were, by the way, tea smugglers.)
What’s the comparison? Each challenged existing authority seemingly from anger owing to frustration on the part of some who felt they were being treated unfairly. Each also had no idea if their actions would evolve into a productive result. AND, the messages in each were the same, “Stop doing that!” and, “We want a different future for ourselves!”
I’m not seeking to make heroes out of those who vandalized BIPD cars. Yet in all fairness, I feel compelled to ask again, “Are we listening?”
What of our priorities? Haven’t they been about “forever having more”? Haven’t they also been about Ivy League schools for our kids (perhaps to serve our own image) pursuing a costly education that often ushers so many of our youth into the same dysfunctional context of commerce and governance responsible for today’s global malaise?
Are we listening to those students who readily express concern about academic stress, not having time to do the things they love (like playing their guitar), cliques, drugs on campus, ever-increasing competition, etc. … including disparaging comments from peers to those NOT heading off to prestigious schools? Do we think high scores on WASL’s truly mean anything in the realm of developing a happy, soulful, intelligent young person capable of helping to redirect the course of the world we adults have brought to their doorstep?
We have a great opportunity here to re-think our culture for the sake of our kids, this community and the planet. I hope we take it.
I think it’s time to look at why boys named thus far have numerous citations by police. Were they and others targeted by officers for harassment? While that doesn’t excuse any retaliation, it might explain why this paint night took a different turn.
Ah, the “Twinkie Defense” is raised. Hmmm!
Dear Ms. Curmudgeon. We were neighbors on BI. You said your clothes line was “environmental”. I couldn’t prove it, but I think that’s why it took Ezra and me 180 days longer than anyone else to sell our home.
I love the Italians! They have style. They throw wet laundry over everything to dry in Sicily, just next door to us in Navels.
You have a kind streak Ms. Curmudgeon. I needed distance to see it. I heard from Stevie Z., the police told him “just give a call anytime, and dial 911, like we told you…”
You know Ezra, I think you met him once (you told him he needed a new bathrobe), he says, “Admit you’re white, if you want to know what it’s like to live in color.” He may have been referring to modern art. He’s so creative. He writes for the government.