Watching, not waiting — Neighborhood bands together to form watch program

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

When Amorette Payment decided to organize a neighborhood watch in her subdivision, her experience as a Red Cross volunteer and Community Emergency Response Team trainee prepared her to put some thought into the unthinkable.

What if an earthquake knocks out the Kenai River bridges in Kenai and Soldotna, and residents of the Westbrook Subdivision, off West Poppy Lane from Kalifornsky Beach Road, have to fend for themselves? What if a forest fire breaks out in the area? What if a crime wave develops in the neighborhood?

At the same time, Payment’s experience as a mom and Alaskan got her thinking about more mundane, but likely to happen, reasons for starting a watch, like warning people about an aggressive moose in the neighborhood, having a system for neighbors to keep an eye on each others’ homes when they’re out of town, or establishing safe houses for kids to go to if they need to escape a bully, get away from a scary dog or if they have an emergency at home.

“It’s better to prevent crime before it becomes a problem than try to catch up with it after it’s already plaguing the neighborhood,” Payment said. “And anytime you have a group of citizens agreeing and with a common goal and purpose and for a common good, that’s really powerful. Neighbors working together have a tremendous amount of strength, whether for preventing crime, keeping kids safe or being prepared for natural disasters. And if you can combine those, you’ve really covered your bases well.”

The neighborhood had a few break-ins last winter, which started Payment thinking about a neighborhood watch. In asking around about it, she found there wasn’t an existing program in place the neighborhood could join, so they’d have to create their own. The Kenai Police Department pointed her to a Web site, www.klaaskids.org, which has a downloadable manual for getting started.

There are 55 homes in Westbrook. Thirty-five participate in the watch program. Payment is the coordinator, and one family from each street serves as block captain, which entailed the adults in the home submitting to background checks. Each block captain keeps information about the families on the street, like contact numbers, serious allergies or medical conditions, and who could be useful in an emergency, whether they’re a plumber or EMT, or have a generator in the garage.

Payment maintains all the records for the participating families and set up a phone tree. If someone sees a suspicious car or there’s a bear in the area, a neighbor can call his or her block captain, who then calls Payment, who activates the phone tree.
“Each person has to make one phone call and the whole neighborhood will know if there’s a problem,” Payment said.

Since February, they haven’t activated the full phone tree, but they have mobilized neighbors to respond to a few situations, including an aggressive moose and missing children.

“Once a couple of kids wandered out of their backyard, so we were on it. We had people looking for them right away and were able to locate them,” Payment said.
Even if the emergency aspect of the system is never used, the program still makes a difference in the neighborhood.

“When someone goes out of town, if they call their block captain, they can keep a closer eye on the house. And we’ve had a lot of that, just more communication between the neighbors, which has been really helpful,” Payment said.

Payment and another neighbor went door to door handing out information and asking for donations to buy neighborhood watch signs and decals. They raised $400 and celebrated the installation of the signs with a neighborhoodwide block party Sept. 21.

The party was a way to disseminate information about the watch program, and Payment figured it’d be a good way to spread information about emergency preparedness, as well, especially since September was Natural Disaster Preparedness Month. She invited representatives from Central Emergency Services, Firewise, Alaska State Troopers and the Office of Emergency Management to talk to residents about making their homes, families and neighborhood safer from disasters.

“All of those people were marvelous. They came on their days off, and that was really gracious of them,” Payment said. “We really appreciate it, and they brought the fire truck and the kids loved it.”

Gary Hale, fire marshal with Central Emergency Services, said he appreciates the neighborhood’s motivation and organization in creating the watch program.

“I was very impressed. One, with taking the initiative in that neighborhood, and someone taking the reins and working with OEM about, ‘What do I need to do?’” he said. “And having the resources and gathering all these people, getting 35 out of 55 homes to participate in this activity and make the attempt to come to this — and they had it on a very nice day — was very positive. I was very impressed with the attendance and what they had done up to that point.”

In an emergency, the common assumption is a firetruck, ambulance or police car will come screaming to the rescue in a matter of moments. That’s the goal, but the reality is it may not always happen like that, Hale said.

In Westbrook, for instance, if an earthquake knocked out the Kenai River bridges — and there are 24,000 earthquakes in Alaska a year — CES in Soldotna or the Kenai Fire Department couldn’t get there. The CES stations in Funny River, Kasilof or the one six miles up K-Beach that could send help are only staffed with one person. Even if the bridges were intact, in the event of a major disaster, CES’ first priority would be to Central Peninsula Hospital and fighting fires, then branching out to help residents.

“The availability of manpower and equipment to come to your area may be a low priority,” Hale said. “A lot of people figure in an event that’s going to happen, police and Alaska State Troopers and the fire department are going to show up. What they don’t understand is in a huge disaster, we’re going to have priorities here making sure we can get our equipment out of the station first.”

Hale added: “If something does happen, I happen to feel they’re going to be one of the few areas that are going to be able to bring it together and help one another.”

Payment said that was point of the watch program — to be ready, whether it’s for an earthquake or other major disaster, or a little one, like plants needing to be watered.

“I am really pleased with it. We have a great neighborhood. We have always looked out for our neighbors, but now we have license to do that. It has a sense of purpose. I do think it has probably made our neighborhood safer, although admittedly our crime rate was low, but we want to keep it that way.”

Stolen goods have hidden consequences — Shoplifting results in higher prices for every customer

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Even if they aren’t caught, shoplifters pay a price for what they take, and so do their parents, friends, neighbors and everyone else in their community.

That’s because the cost of shoplifting is factored into the price of goods. The more that’s stolen, the more the item will cost down the road.

“When someone shoplifts, in reality what they are doing is stealing from each individual customer,” said Jason Moulton, loss prevention director for Safeway, Seattle division, which includes Alaska. “Yeah, we are the victim today. But we’re a for-profit organization, so what we have to do is take that expense and build it into the cost of goods. So really they’ve victimized their parents, their family and all the customers of that store.”

The Safeway stores in Kenai and Soldotna got a boost in shoplifting prevention two weeks ago when a loss prevention team from Anchorage visited the stores.

“It’s a routine thing. We do it on a regular basis, unannounced and without any fanfare.

You may be able to shoplift one day and get away with it, the next time there will be an undercover person in the store and you are apprehended,” Moulton said.

It may be routine from Safeway’s standpoint, but it creates a dramatic spike in shoplifting calls for local police departments.

From Aug. 20 through Aug. 27, Soldotna police responded to 12 reports of shoplifters in custody at the Soldotna store. By comparison, there were two reports of shoplifters in custody from Aug. 28 through Sept. 4, and none from July 31 to Aug. 19.

Kenai saw a similar spike. From Aug. 1 through Aug. 19, Kenai police reported two calls to Kenai Safeway to pick up shoplifters in custody. From Aug. 20 through 25, 11 people were arrested or issued summonses to court for shoplifting at Kenai Safeway. From Aug. 25 to the end of the month, no calls were reported. Most of the reported thefts were under $20, with a few over $50.

“Shoplifting is a problem. It’s a problem we deal with every single day,” Moulton said.
Safeway isn’t alone. Other retailers face the same issue and deal with it in a similar way, by building the cost of stolen goods into prices. Moulton said that, nationwide, items stolen from retailers for the purpose of resale could exceed $40 billion a year. And that’s just things like tools, shoes, electronics or teeth-whitening strips taken to be fenced through eBay or some other method. That doesn’t even include items stolen for the shoplifter’s use, like cosmetics or candy bars.

All of it factors into what retailers call “shrink” — the difference between a store’s inventory and the amount of goods sold. Shrink for nonperishable items, like canned goods or cleaning products, can result from factors other than shoplifting, including employee theft, bad paperwork or stuff just getting lost. But shrink mostly means shoplifting, Moulton said.

The industry retail standard for a large store with millions of dollars in products is 1 percent to 1.5 percent “shrinkage,” Moulton said. He said that Safeway has one of the lowest rates of shrink in the food industry, but what they do suffer still takes a hit on the business’s bottom line, which in turn takes a bite out of shoppers’ wallets.

“It is not a small number. It’s a significant number,” Moulton said. “When you operate on the margins Safeway operates with, when you have any kind of uptick in shrinkage, that takes an awful lot of sales to make up for that item.”

If retail profit margins are only pennies on the dollar for products sold, it could take up to 20 additional items sold to make up for the one that walks off without a trip through the checkout line, Moulton said. At the end of the year, those costs are calculated and rolled into the prices of merchandise.

“Remember, ultimately, the victim is not Safeway. Ultimately, the victim is the customer. I think if people understand that, I think there’s more of an incentive in reporting it,” he said.

Customers do report shoplifting, Moulton said. Closed-circuit cameras also help, and store employees are trained to watch for shoplifting and deal with the situation. Good customer service goes a long way in preventing shoplifting, with clerks expected to make contact with customers in store aisles and ask if they need assistance.

A simple, “Can I help you find anything?” isn’t always enough to stop brazen thefts. Moulton said an emerging trend, especially in Washington State, is shoplifters filling up entire carts with meat, baby food or other items intended for resale, and just pushing them out the door.

That’s not as common on the central Kenai Peninsula, according to Sgt. Randy Kornfield, with the Kenai Police Department. It takes prior experience to get to the point where you’ve got the guts to try that.

Cost of living increases don’t have much of an effect on shoplifting rates, Moulton and Kornfield said, especially with a variety of social programs aimed at helping provide food to those who can’t afford it.

“When we catch people, I don’t see it as a desperation thing. I see it more as a lifestyle,” Kornfield said.

Mounting bills or climbing gas prices don’t necessarily make a thief out of an otherwise moral person, Kornfield said. It’s more of a learned behavior — caving to peer pressure among teenagers to steal something little, which can build to bigger or more frequent thefts if they aren’t caught or otherwise discouraged.

If they are caught, it can be a costly lesson to learn. Even misdemeanor thefts result in fines and can even include jail time. Stores can pursue civil restitution, as well, and ban a shoplifter from their locations.

Alaska statutes give retailers some power in combating shoplifting. For instance, it’s a crime in Alaska for shoppers to conceal merchandise, even if they don’t walk out of the store with it. That way store personnel can confront potential thieves before they get to the parking lot, where they have a better chance of getting away.

“You folks do have really good laws,” Moulton said. “And I must say your prosecution up there is excellent. We get excellent results. You guys in Alaska take theft seriously.”

At Safeway, a part of taking it seriously is the loss prevention teams, which come from a company that contracts with Safeway to provide the service. Loss prevention officers are undercover and trained to not attract any attention.

Shoplifters attempt to not attract attention, as well. Two weeks ago on the central peninsula showed loss prevention officers are better at it, unless they have a reason to contact you.

“You’ll know when they’re there,” Moulton said.

Editor’s note: Representatives from Kenai and Soldotna Safeway stores did not comment in this story per corporate instruction.

Frontier justice: All’s well that ends in a well

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

Jerry Hobart was sleeping peacefully on a cold, dark February night when he was awakened by the sounds of damage being done. It was about 1:30 a.m. in 1960. Almost immediately he knew that the place was being robbed.

A ticket agent for Pacific Northern Airlines in Kenai, the 22-year-old Hobart, his wife, Carol, and infant daughter, Katie, lived in a one-bedroom efficiency apartment off the back of the PNA office. Hobart quickly rose from bed, signaled to Carol to stay where she was, and headed for his gun.

“It was pretty evident what was happening,” Hobart said. “I could hear the guys talking.”

He speculated that the thieves might not have realized anyone was living in the PNA facility.

His rifle was hanging in its case in the bedroom closet.

“I went in and unzipped the case,” he said. “I didn’t know how many (rounds) was in the magazine, but I knew there was at least one. I didn’t keep anything in the chamber.”

His hands wrapped around his rifle — a bolt-action .308 used mainly for moose hunting. He moved quietly down a narrow passageway separating the apartment from the lobby.

“I went out into the lobby, and that’s when I jacked a round into the chamber,” he said. He got the immediate attention of two men behind the ticket counter busily attempting to break into what Hobart called a “tin-can type of cabinet (used) as a safe.”

“There was a night light so I could see ’em. I told ’em to get out from behind the counter and get down on the floor. And they did.

“I got ’em lying down, and the older guy, who was the one with the big rap sheet, turned out, he kept wanting to get up in somewhat of a sitting or squatting position. So I pointed the rifle near him — I don’t know that I pointed it right at him — and I told him, ‘Get back on the floor, flat on your stomach!’”

If the burglars wondered whether Hobart was prepared to shoot, they didn’t have to wait long to find out.

As Hobart was attempting to call for help, the older man took off running. “I shot at him, but I shot for the legs. I didn’t shoot for the torso,” he said.

Hobart was cradling the rifle at the time, so his shot came more or less from the hip.

“I missed him but sure took a lot of wood off the door jamb,” he said. “Then I turned back into the room, and the other guy melted into the floor. He wasn’t going anywhere.”

The thieves had left a car parked outside, and the escaping man fled for it. Assured that the younger man would stay put, Hobart poked his head outside. Judging by the taillights, he guessed the car to be an Oldsmobile.

Back inside, he called Stan Thompson, who at the time was the U.S. commissioner for most of the Kenai Peninsula.

In 1960, Kenai had no jail, no marshal or regular magistrate, and only sporadic highway patrol. On that day, the closest state trooper was in Anchorage, more than three hours away on a narrow gravel highway.

“I was the only judicial figure (in the area),” Thompson said. “I had to do all the law work and the prisoner work and everything. There weren’t any other officials out there.”
Thompson told Hobart to bring the prisoner over.

At the time, the PNA office was across from the current Kenai Visitors and Cultural Center, while Thompson was living with his wife, Donnis, above their Kenai Korners building materials store next to where Paradisos is now. Although the distance was not great, Hobart decided to enlist some help in escorting the prisoner.

“I figured if I’m going to march that sucker over there, I’ll put in a call to the MPs (military police at the Wildwood military base, where Hobart had served for two years) and see if I can get somebody to give me a hand.”

A short time later, two MPs appeared, with sidearms. Confidentially, they informed Hobart they were willing to help as much as possible but they wouldn’t be able to fire upon a civilian prisoner if he caused a problem. Hobart told them he was willing to do the shooting.

Once Thompson had the prisoner “in custody,” he called for trooper assistance and reached Officer Wayne Morgan. With Hobart’s help, he described the escaped burglar and his vehicle.

Thompson and Hobart then had to decide how to detain their prisoner until Morgan arrived. They considered several options before Thompson remembered the hand-dug well beneath the floor of his building.

They removed the floorboards covering the well and switched on the single bulb dangling in the cribbed 6-by-6 shaft. More than 10 feet down, on dry ground, sat an electric pump, and they sent the prisoner down a ladder to wait.

They also sent down a chair and some magazines. Just before they replaced the floorboards, they decided to increase the young man’s incentive to stay put.

“I told him I was setting my big dog right on top of the well, so he didn’t want to try to come out. And believe me, he didn’t,” Thompson said.

Instead of a big dog, they actually stacked crates of paint on top of the floorboards, Hobart said. Prisoner detention accounted for, Hobart walked back home and went to bed.

About four or five hours later, Officer Morgan arrived and took the prisoner into custody. Earlier, he had apprehended the older man at a roadblock on the outskirts of Anchorage, where he had parked his patrol car and watched for the suspect Oldsmobile.

Both men were tried and convicted. Later, FBI officials came by to examine Thompson’s well to see whether the prisoner’s treatment qualified as cruel or unusual punishment. They decided it did not.

Hobart ¬later briefly became a state trooper himself.

Horses not allowed in town? ‘That’s bull’ — Soldotna man charged up over arrest, night in jail for disorderly conduct

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

“You don’t mess with hillbillies.”

That’s the message Robert D. Sherman has for anyone looking to hassle him over his horse.

Sherman, of Soldotna, regularly rides his 9-year-old registered Morgan mare, Jazzy, three miles into Soldotna from his 80 acres in the Sport Lake area.

After losing his driver’s license this winter on a driving while license suspended or revoked charge stemming from legal wrangling over a lack of insurance and payment for a fender bender, Sherman’s horse has become more than just a pet.

“That’s my mode of transportation,” he said on Aug. 27.

When the 62-year-old hits the road, he does it as Dr. Shoals or the Old West intended – on foot, or on horseback.

“I walk 10 miles every day just to keep my heart pumping,” he said.

In cowboy boots, no less, complete with cowboy hat, plaid shirt, metal belt buckle that looks big enough to throw him off balance, and a cigarette in hand.

The boots he’s worn “all my life,” he said. He grew up in Kentucky, and left his family’s homestead there to come to Alaska in 1991 looking for better financial opportunities.
“I met a gal in Florida. She talked me into a visit and I fell in love with it,” he said. “I stayed and she left. I’ll never leave.”

Sherman retired in February, he said, and keeps busy growing produce for the Wednesday Farmer’s Market at Soldotna Creek Park, taking care of his animals (along with Jazzy, he has three dogs), and regularly eats breakfast at Central Peninsula Hospital, where he’s gotten to know the staff through his bouts of heart problems.

He says he’s had two stents, four bypasses, three angioplasties and in 2005 had open heart surgery after doctors discovered he’d had a heart attack in 2004.

“But I do real well. God’s been good to me,” he said.

Law enforcement, on the other hand, not so much, he said.

Sherman draws attention — honks, waves, double-takes — when he comes into town, riding or walking Jazzy on city sidewalks or waiting for traffic to clear enough to lead her across the highway. The attention he’s gotten from law enforcement has not been as friendly, he said.

Around noon on Aug. 22, Sherman was arrested at City Hall in Soldotna. He says he stopped by to see the mayor or city manager, but neither was available so he went back outside to leave. While collecting Jazzy from out front, police arrived and arrested him.Sherman says the officer arrested him for disturbing the peace because he had his horse in town.

“It’s pretty sad when you can’t ride a horse in a country that’s free,” he said.

Soldotna police tell a different story, that Sherman walked in a back door at City Hall into an employee area with two of his dogs in tow, demanding to see the mayor.

According to a police report, Sherman had been contacted by police about a half hour earlier on Aspen Drive for his horse and two dogs walking in traffic. During that interaction, police report Sherman was cursing, yelling loudly and poked an officer in the chest with his finger. He was given a disorderly conduct warning and released.

After the police were called to City Hall, Sherman was arrested for disorderly conduct and taken to Wildwood Pretrial Facility.

“That’s bull,” Sherman said. His animals are always in control, he said.

“They all mind me this well,” he said, indicating his dog, Babe a skin-and-bones yellow lump flopped on the ground at his feet. Sherman says he gave her away a year ago but recently took her back when he saw the shape she was in. He says he’s put five to 10 pounds on her since he’s had her back.

“If I holler at them if they’re heading into somebody’s yard, they come right back,” he said. “I don’t believe in beating animals, either. I don’t hurt animals.”

He’s had 12 dogs, Sherman said, but has lost all but three.

“The bears or other animals get them,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of trouble with bears out there.”

Sherman’s horse has also been picked up in Kenai for wandering loose. Animal control officers picked up Jazzy on Aug. 10 after finding her wandering in a neighborhood. Sherman was in town visiting a friend and had tied Jazzy up outside, but she got loose, he said.

Animal control officers notified Sherman that they had his horse, and he came to the shelter to get her.
“It was never any problem for us. He was very cordial. He did everything he was supposed to do,” said Patricia Stringer, chief animal control officer in Kenai.

Stringer said there are only certain areas of the city where raising livestock is allowed, but there’s no law against riding a horse.

“Somebody riding it through town or walking it through town, that’s not an issue,” she said.

Soldotna Police Sgt. Duane Kant said the same is true in Soldotna.

“I think you can ride a horse in town, to the best of my knowledge,” he said.

The issue with Sherman wasn’t the horse, Kant said, it was Sherman’s behavior.

At Wildwood, Sherman says he was assaulted by six guards, and one was 500 pounds.
“I’m an old man. I’m 120 pounds soaking wet. That 500-pound guy sat on my back, took the back of my feet and pulled them over my head,” he said.

By the time he was released Aug. 23, he said he was bruised and went to the hospital, but nothing was broken.

Sherman said the guards wouldn’t book him or let his friend bail him out Aug. 22, and he was angry about it.

“I did everything they told me, except shut up. I screamed and hollered all night. That’s why I’m so hoarse still.

“I said, ‘It’s a good thing you’ve got me handcuffed, or I’d kick your a--,’” he said.

Richard Schmitz, a communications assistant to the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Corrections, said it’s not uncommon to use multiple officers to restrain someone who is being uncooperative. He didn’t have specific details about Sherman’s situation.

Sherman said he plans to consult a lawyer about the incident.

“I’m a pretty peacefully person, but when somebody rolls on me, I don’t take it. So I’m not very happy, and I’m not done screaming and hollering. I’m an old hillbilly from Kentucky. You don’t mess with hillbillies.”

In the meantime, he’ll keep riding Jazzy wherever he pleases.

“I’ve waved at the cops every time they drove by today,” he said on Aug. 27. “I don’t have a problem with them. I just want them to leave me alone.”