By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Port Angeles Police arrested a local man, familiar to anyone who spends time in the downtown area, and he’s being held on $30,000 bail.
On Monday at about 5:00pm, officers responded to a disturbance at the Haynes Park overlook on Front Street. A couple told police they were seated in their vehicle eating their hamburgers as a man in a wheelchair was yelling at people in the park and digging through a garbage can. They say he then threw garbage onto their windshield. When they commented about him throwing the garbage, the man pulled out a machete, threatened the couple, and then left the area.
Officers found him not far away, still holding the machete. They arrested him without incident and booked him into the jail after being medically cleared.
He remains in the jail for this incident and for warrants from unrelated cases. Again, he’s a person well-known to residents for spending his days moving throughout the downtown area in his wheelchair, often harassing passersby, yelling threats, and is clearly struggling with mental health issues.
Police reported the man’s arrest on social media, and it’s generated a lot of comments, some of which are critical of law enforcement and the judicial system.
We took the opportunity to reach out to Deputy Police Chief Jason Viada to help us understand what local law enforcement are up against in cases like this.
“I think what’s important to remember is that we have a robust partnership with OPCC, and we have a reDiscovery program, and we have social workers that are in the police cars with police officers. And Pepper, I know that in the last few years, we’ve talked a lot about alternatives to incarceration and, you know, some of those options can work at times. However, there are people out there that have been offered option after option after option and they refuse to cooperate, they refuse to participate, they refused to follow the law. And so, we’re left with the only solution that will work, and that is incarceration.”
Viada says another frustration for police and the Sheriff’s Office is a reduction in jail capacity that was created first by the pandemic and made more difficult by recent construction updates that are underway, along with staffing challenges that all agencies are facing.
So, with this person off the streets for now, what are the chances that something can be done to improve his lot and, in some small way, that of his neighbors?
“There’s a lot of talk about getting people the help that they need, and so many times that can be ordered through the court, but the first stop is the jail. And so, we get the people off the street, into the jail, so that law and order is restored in the community. Then they go up to see the judge and, as the court process continues, they can be ordered to access the services that many of them had been offered ahead of time and refused. And so, that’s where we’re at today.”