Wednesday, November 27, 2002

High-speed chase ends in Scarborough

Published in the Current

What would have been a routine traffic stop in Saco ended up as a high-speed car chase late Saturday night on Route 1 into Scarborough, resulting in charges against a 17-year-old Biddeford male who was driving without a license.

Saco Police Officer Kevin Gray tried to pull over a car on Main Street for running a red light and squealing its tires. Instead of pulling over, the driver fled, with two passengers in the car, heading north on Route 1, according to Saco Police Sgt. Jeffrey Holland.

The car reached speeds of 90 mph on the straightaway on Saco’s outer Route 1 and was moving so fast that an Old Orchard Beach police officer trying to set up tire-deflating road spikes at Cascade Road and Portland Road was unable to make it to the intersection in time.

The chase continued north into Scarborough, and a Scarborough officer joined it just inside the town line, as the cars headed north through the marsh, still at high speed.

“You’re basically trying to keep an eye on the guy who’s fleeing from you,” Holland said.

Another Scarborough officer successfully deployed the tire spikes at the Maine Veterans’ Home, flattening all four tires on the car, Holland said. Shortly after that, the tires fell off the rims and the car stopped right by Westwood Avenue, very nearly in front of the Scarborough police station.

The driver jumped out and ran toward the rear of Scarborough High School, Holland said, and officers lost him. An Old Orchard Beach police dog and handler were called to the scene, but failed to find the driver.

The two passengers in the car, however, had not fled. A 15-year-old female and 17-year-old male were still in the car, shaken up from the speeds of the chase. Holland said the girl had appeared “extremely upset” and had told officers she had started to pray in the back seat, fearing that the car would crash and she would be killed.

The passengers told the police who the driver was, a 17-year-old male from Biddeford whose name is not being released because he is a juvenile. A 12-pack of beer was found in the car’s trunk.

“Apparently he fled ultimately because he doesn’t have a license,” Holland said. The driver is being charged with eluding an officer, criminal speed, operating without a license and illegal transportation of liquor by a minor.

The passengers were not charged , Holland said, and were released to their parents.

Returning with lessons from Japan

Published in the Current

Pond Cove School Principal Tom Eismeier is poised to bring more Japanese influence into his school, following a recent educational trip to Japan.

“The schools were fascinating,” Eismeier said. The three-week trip began with a series of seminars on Japanese culture and life and set the stage for the rest of his experience. The speakers conveyed a strong sense of national pride and the Japanese temperament, which favors indirect criticism over direct confrontation.

“If you’re paying attention, you get all these hints,” Eismeier said.

He wants to return to Japan at some point, and also set up a partnership between Pond Cove School and an elementary school there, hoping to deepen the connections and lessons he found on this journey.

The trip started in Tokyo, where he found a startling division between the bustle of one of the world’s busiest cities and the placid quiet of a Buddhist monastery. All that separated the two was a small ceremonial curb.

“The Japanese seem to be very good at setting up mental boundaries,” Eismeier said.

The group of 200 American educators, organized and funded by the Fulbright Memorial Foundation, split into groups of 20, who headed off to 10 prefectures around the country.

Eismeier’s group went to the area farthest north on Japan’s largest island, the prefecture that has a sister-state relationship with Maine: Aomori.

He found that unlike the U.S., “the national curriculum and the national standards are actually accepted,” Eismeier said. “The schools are the same, the structure is the same and the curriculum is the same, no matter where you are.”

On the other hand, Eismeier said, the local control that is the hallmark of American education is missing in Japan. “There is not a lot of local influence,” Eismeier said.

The influence is national, as is the learning. Teachers share information within schools and the district, and give feedback to the national government on its quality. The process is “mediated at every level,” Eismeier said, to ensure the feedback is valid and that change does not happen too rapidly.

One major change that has occurred through this process is new this year. To reduce pressure on students, a six-day school week has been shortened. Now every other week, students have only five days of school. It allows families to have more time together as well, Eismeier said.

The curriculum has been shortened as a result, he said, making teachers feel pressure to teach faster. That’s a problem in a country and an educational system where, to teachers, “how you teach is more important than what you teach,” according to Eismeier.

The central government sends out information on what the students will do and the teachers figure out how to deliver that information appropriately.

“It strikes outsiders as very rigid, and it’s really not,” Eismeier said.

The mental boundaries, however, are as strong in Aomori as in Tokyo. Teachers leave their classes alone from time to time, without any discipline problems at all.

At a welcome ceremony at one school, Eismeier looked around and realized, “Every teacher in the building is there. What are the kids doing?”

Even at recess, the students are allowed to run wild, so long as they are quiet and orderly in the classroom.

Kindergarteners were especially exciting to watch at recess.

“They had dirt and sand and water and they were making a huge mess,” Eismeier said. Afterwards, they washed themselves off before coming inside, he said, carefully hosing off their feet and hands.

Other school issues are also very different in Japan. A teacher of a junior high science class Eismeier observed was studiously ignoring students who were talking elsewhere in the room, a contrast with the American teacher’s
typical exhortations for everyone in the room to pay attention.

Also, the degree of visual learning was impressive. “The blackboards were amazing,” Eismeier said. Without being able to read Japanese, but after seeing the board, he knew how to do the lab.

There is a strong emphasis on figuring things out, Eismeier said, and on group and teamwork. That’s especially noteworthy when there is no tracking or ability grouping in the schools: Everyone performs together.

There is also very little of what Americans call “special education.” While the Japanese are worried about autism and learning disabilities, and seek to learn more from their American counterparts, the primary emphasis for Japanese special education is physical disability, Eismeier said.

He did see what Americans call the “inclusion model,” where a student with special needs was in the classroom with instructional support.

He also asked about the lesson study technique Pond Cove teachers have been using, based on a Japanese program in which teachers prepare a lesson together and then observe it being taught, and later rework the lesson to improve it further.

In Japan, Eismeier found, that happens on a variety of levels, involving teachers from the school, the district and even nationwide, with as many as 500 people observing a single lesson being taught.

Eismeier said elementary schools have some similar problems in the two countries, including competition from private kindergartens that stress academics, in place of public kindergartens focusing on socialization and community.

He did say, though, there was no four-square to be found in Japan. Nonetheless, he termed the trip a success, and said, “I want to go back.”

ON AC T I V E DU TY: Pvt. Jacqueline McKe n n ey

Published in the Current

Pvt. Jacqueline McKenney of Shore Road is in the Maine Army National Guard and a first-year midshipman at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine. A 2002 graduate of Cape Elizabeth High School, McKenney completed basic training in July at Fort Jackson, S.C., and began school at
Maine Maritime in August.

She joined the Guard in February and had to skip CEHS graduation to attend basic training.

While there, “she did really well,” said her father, Paul McKenney. She was second in her company for physical fitness.

Her basic training experience was, Paul said, “very realistic.”

Many of the recruits in her class were heading for infantry units destined for the Middle East. The drill instructors, Paul said, wanted to be sure they were trained especially well for the tough combat that could come their way.

McKenney will attend her Advanced Individual Training for work as an aviation operations specialist next summer. She is a member of the 112th Air Ambulance Company, based in Bangor.

McKenney’s family has a long history of military service. Her grandfather was in the Navy, and her father, Paul, a former active-duty Army officer, is now a major in the headquarters unit of the Maine Army National Guard. His five brothers have also served in various branches of the military, including the Maine National Guard, and Jackie’s twin brothers, Alex and Aaron, now both seniors at CEHS, are planning to enter the military when they graduate, either at one of the service academies or through an officer training program at the colleges they choose.

After graduation from Maine Maritime, McKenney is hoping to transfer into the Navy. In the meantime, she is taking advantage of an incentive program in which the Maine National Guard covers all of her tuition at any state school and gives her a salary to be a student.

“We’re very proud of her,” her father said.

Student threats still under investigation

Published in the Current

A Cape Elizabeth High School student is facing possible charges of terrorizing – a misdemeanor – for making threats against at least one other student and the school, according to Police Chief Neil Williams.

Williams said the student is a male age “15 or 16.” Principal Jeff Shedd said the student made threats against at least two students and “the school community.”

Shedd and Williams both said there was no imminent danger to students or the school.

The student allegedly made threats verbally during school and electronically over computer instant messaging systems. Students who were targets of threats, as well as students who had heard about the threats from others, told school staff, Shedd said.

Details of the threat have not been released but the student apparently threatened the life of at least one person. The student has not been suspended, but has been “removed from school pending evaluation,” Shedd said, and will not be allowed back until police and school officials deem it as safe. The student is receiving assignments and instruction while out of school, Shedd said.

With the help of the school, the student and his parents, Cape police are conducting an investigation into the threats. Williams said the student was not conspiring with other students, and it is unknown whether he was actually going to carry out his threats.

“We know that there was one threat against a person,” Williams said. Part of the investigation is intended to discover if any other actual threats were made.

Williams said the “rumor mill” is hard to sort through, and officers will question people with direct knowledge of the threats, who either heard the threats themselves or received them in typed messages.

“We can’t take those things lightly,” he said. “Kids say things when they’re angry,” he said, but “you have to look into it.”

Cape police will send a computer, on which some of the threats are believed to have been typed, to the Maine Computer Crimes Task Force for analysis, though that agency has a large backlog of cases. The computer was obtained from the family without a search warrant, Williams said.

The student has not been arrested, and Williams does not expect officers to arrest him. Police officers can only make arrests for misdemeanors when they directly observe the crime being committed. No officer was a direct witness to the threats, so Williams expects a summons to be issued.

He said the parents and the student are “cooperating” with the investigation. The student’s father has turned over four guns – two handguns and two “long guns” – to police voluntarily, Williams said.

The man is allowed to own guns and they are properly registered, Williams said. Police will return the guns to the man when he and police deem it appropriate, Williams said.

Shedd said he has no reason to believe any weapons were ever brought into the school, and “there is no evidence that there was ever a plan,” he said.

After the threats were reported, Shedd said the students were called to an assembly, at which school officials told them about the incident and assured them the school was safe. “We wanted them to know that it was some gutsy students” who told school staff about the threats, Shedd said.

Rumors of the involvement of a machine gun, a “hit list,” weapons in the student’s room and a military presence at the school, Shedd said, are untrue. He said there have been military recruiters visiting the high school periodically, and that may have been the source of the rumor of military involvement.

This is the most serious case of school threatening to occur in Cape Elizabeth, though it has brought back memories of a lesser threat made about a year ago. In that case, Williams said, officers had far less information to go on at the outset. The parents of that student cooperated with the police, removed a gun from their home and got their son the assistance he needed, Williams said.

Police and school officials are working closely together and have the cooperation of the parents, Shedd said. He was glad that students had had the courage to come forward and report the problem.

“It’s working out as well as it could work out,” Shedd said.

Thursday, November 21, 2002

Man arrested for contact with girl at hayride

Published in the Current

George Walters of 58 Coach Lantern Lane – charged with three counts of unlawful sexual contact – was arrested Nov. 8 for violating bail conditions after he attended the Scary Hayride at Bayley’s Campground where he was in contact with a 10-year-old girl.

He remains in Cumberland County Jail without bail, awaiting a Nov. 25 hearing on whether he will be required to remain in jail until his trial, scheduled for Dec. 30.

Walters is charged with violation of his bail conditions, but no other crime related to the Scary Hayride incident. The bail conditions stem from three charges, filed in July, of felony unlawful sexual contact between January and April of this year, and prohibit him from being in the presence of any females under 16 years of age.

Court documents allege that on three successive days, Oct. 25, 26 and 27, Walters was in the presence of a male friend of his, who lives in Portland, and that friend’s 10-year-old daughter.

Oct. 25 they were roller-skating together in Portland. Oct. 26 there was a party at the Walters home in Scarborough, at which the girl and her father attended. Following the party, the group again went roller-skating. And on
Oct. 27, Walters and members of his family as well as the man and his daughter went to the Scary Hayride at Bayley’s Campground on Pine Point Road in Scarborough.

Officer Robert Moore, who arrested Walters on the initial charges and the new charge of violating his bail conditions, said the presence of the girl in Walters’s company is cause for allegations of violation of bail conditions.

Moore said he presently has no evidence Walters committed any crime at the hayride.

In July, Walters was charged with three counts of unlawful sexual contact with three separate victims. In court documents filed by Moore supporting the charges, the three alleged victims are named, as are three other
girls who, the documents say, suffered “some degree of sexual molestation” by Walters. The documents also allege Walters “views and collects child
pornography.”

The alleged victims were all known to Walters and the unlawful sexual contact allegedly occurred in the Walters home while the girls were visiting.

Court documents allege Walters repeatedly grabbed, touched and rubbed several of the girls on more than one occasion, despite the girls’ screams and cries for Walters to stop.

The bail conditions under which Walters was allowed to post $5,000 cash bail in July include prohibiting Walters from having contact with one of the
victims named in the charges, as well as two other girls not named in the charges but mentioned in supporting documents. He is also prohibited from having contact with any girl under the age of 16, and from owning or using a computer with Internet access.

Moore learned of the alleged contact at the hayride as well as the alleged prior incidents through his work at the Scarborough Middle School, where he is the school resource officer. A court document indicates the school’s principal is concerned for other girls who may visit the Walters home.

A witness statement in court documents suggests Walters’s attorney had warned him against going roller-skating and passing out Halloween candy to trick-ortreaters.

Walters is a first-class petty officer with 20 years’ service in the Coast Guard, according to Lt. j.g. Jeff Craig of the Coast Guard station in South Portland, where Walters is stationed.

He is qualified as a cook but, Craig said, Walters is currently working on the station’s maintenance staff.

Craig said the Coast Guard is not conducting a separate investigation but is cooperating with the Scarborough investigation.

Moore said the Coast Guard had asked him to arrest Walters outside the base, and Moore did so. “They had him leave the base,” Moore said.

Scarborough Detective Sgt. Rick Rouse said Walters had no prior record of sexual crimes. Walters’s attorney, Peter Rodway, did not return multiple phone calls from the Current.