Monthly Archives: November 2008

Local Peninsula Police, Border Patrol Appear at Odds

An exchange between Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Brasfield and U.S. Border Patrol Chief John Bates this week — before a packed Chimacum High School auditorium — saw an interesting confrontation, according to the Peninsula Daily News.

Bates was asked by a person in the crowd this question: what would happen if a driver refused to give identification to a federal agent at a border patrol checkpoint, writes Reporter Erik Hidle.

Bates replied they’d need help from Brasfield’s deputies.

Brasfield said no-can-do. “I’m sorry, but we would not get involved. We do not have any rights to issue an infraction in that situation,” Hidle quoted Brasfield as saying.

“The standing room only crowd erupted into a round of applause,” Hidle wrote.

And thus the saga of the border patrol’s bolstering of resources on the north peninsula continues.

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The Death Penalty Returns to Washington

Washington’s death penalty hasn’t been used since 2001, and in that time has been nearly struck down by the state’s supreme court.

The law has been used more as a bargaining chip for prosecutors to get defendants charged in heinous crimes to plead guilty to a life-without-parole sentence.

But come December, Washington’s death chamber at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla will (likely) be used once more for Darold Stenson, a Clallam County man convicted of shooting to death his wife and business partner. He’ll go the way of lethal injection — unless he chooses to be hanged — and his death would mark just the fourth execution in Washington in 45 years.

As many of you know, that sparce of execution count is not the way all of the states in our union do business. Wisconsin, for example, abolished the penalty. Texas, on the other end of things, is executing 12 people in a six week period that began a few weeks back.

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Cookies, Propane Tanks and a Kayak (and Other Recent Eyebrow-Raising Thefts)

To twist the Bill Cosby-hosted TV show, criminals steal the darnedest things.

You might have seen today that thieves broke into an Auto Center Way bakery and took the business for baked goods and cookies.

But elsewhere around Bremerton and the county, there have been some rather unusual thefts lately. Here’s a few:

Six propane tanks were stolen from the Albertson’s on Wheaton Way Sunday.

A kayak was taken from a Marine Drive residence Sunday, only to be found floating near the shores of Oyster Bay later in the day.

And don’t forget the cat.

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