Editorial: Parents: Get involved

Published in the Current

(July 28, 2005): When police officers have to work harder to get parents more involved in their children’s safety, there’s a problem.

But that’s where we are. As we see on Page 1, local police officers and law enforcement agencies around the state have banded together in a couple of efforts to help keep teens safe. One program will let parents know when kids are driving badly, and the other asks parents to grant advance permission for police to enter their homes if kids are left home alone and hold parties or cause other disturbances.

Our communities, Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and South Portland, have already had similar practices in place for a while. In Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough, for example, many of the officers call parents when a teen driver is stopped for a violation.

But South Portland has never had a program for parents to register a home when a teen is left there alone for several days. And Cape’s program like that has never gotten widespread involvement, though some parents do take advantage of it.

Few South Portland parents have used the “How’s my driving?” bumper-sticker effort, perhaps because teens share the car and the adults don’t want to hear the feedback on their own actions.

Police are effectively challenging parents to participate more, by coming up with new ideas – and taking on more work for themselves, like calling parents – to help keep teens safe.

We can be sure it’s not because they want more work. Actually, they want to keep kids safe, and reduce their own workload in the future. By stopping problems when kids are young and the challenges are relatively small, police hope they can prevent more trouble in the future, including more serious crimes and bad car crashes.

Parents need to reciprocate the cops’ efforts, seeking out information from the police on how their children are behaving, and acting on what they learn.

There’s an axiom about parenting: The main job is to get the child to age 18, safe and healthy; anything more than that is a bonus. While there’s more to parenting than that, it’s certainly a place to start.

At the paper we hear stories from time to time about how one parent or another yelled at a police officer calling to talk about a teen’s wrongdoing. That sort of response is not appropriate. If there is a stern talking-to to be doled out, it’s not to the officer who caught the kid.

Parents need to understand how their actions affect their children, even beyond the teenage years.

Studies show that parents’ driving habits influence teen drivers’ habits more than any other source. If kids are learning from the people who run red lights – as happens at nearly every local intersection all day, every day – we’re all in a lot of danger out on the roads.

Parents also need to get real. Studies keep showing that parents are in denial about their children’s behavior, including how often they drink – or whether they drink at all.

Few teens resist the chance to drink or experiment with other risky behavior. That was the case when I was a kid, when my parents were kids, and when my grandparents were kids.

The same types of temptations exist now as have ever existed. Somewhere between their own teenage years and their children's, as part of growing up, people come to believe they are doing something different – that they, as parents, are changing the circumstances around their children to be something other than their own childhoods.

And many do, in many ways making their children's lives better. But the world outside the house has not changed so much, and believing – even knowing – your kids have it better than you should not extend to believing your kids act differently than kids ever have in the face of peer pressure, temptation and curiosity.

Parents who are planning to go out of town and leave their kids in charge of the house should let the local police know. Even if the kid doesn’t throw a party intentionally, friends who find out about an adult-free house have been known to show up and create a party where none might have existed before.

Parents should allow police into their homes to break up parties, no matter their cause. And they should make sure they find out what kind of driving habits their children are learning and practicing on the roads of our communities. Getting involved is the only way to make a difference.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Standoff ends in arrests

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (July 28, 2005): A Portland man was being held without bail at Cumberland County Jail this week following his arrest Monday after a nine-hour standoff with police in South Portland.

Police have charged Dana Goodine, 46, of Portland with failure to submit to arrest and creating a police standoff, since he emerged at 8 a.m. Monday from from a house at 724 Broadway where he had been holed up since 11 p.m. Sunday.

Police said Goodine, who was wanted on several warrants, had threatened police. One of the warrants was issued by a judge before whom Goodine was supposed to appear a couple weeks ago, according to South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins.

The others were issued by Goodine’s probation officer, revoking his probation on two counts of motor vehicle burglary and two counts of theft by unauthorized taking.

Goodine had shown up recently at the Cumberland County Courthouse for an arraignment but had left before the proceedings began, according to sheriff’s deputies and court security officers.

“I do not know why he was there or what his status was,” Googins said, noting that his only knowledge of the incident was from Goodine’s probation officer.

An anonymous caller told police Goodine would be at the home Sunday evening. When officers arrived, Goodine refused to come out of the house, Googins said.

Police believed he was armed with a handgun and had received an “officer safety teletype” about Goodine saying “he, having multiple warrants, has made statements that he will not be arrested, that he will go down in a blaze of glory,” Googins said.

Police surrounded the house, using tactical teams from South Portland and Scarborough, as well as two Portland officers with their armored vehicle.

Police had an arrest warrant for Goodine, but not a search warrant allowing them to enter the home, so they had no legal authority to do so until a judge signed off on it Monday morning, Googins said.

At that point, police fired bean bags through several windows into the house, and were preparing to fire tear gas to try to force Goodine out. Police negotiators also were involved, ultimately talking Goodine into surrendering at about 8 a.m.

“He has a rap sheet about one inch thick,” Googins said.

A second man in the home, Roy Chase, 45, of South Portland was also arrested. Googins originally said he was not under arrest but had been handcuffed “for his safety and ours,” and was only being questioned.

Chase has been charged with creating a police standoff and hindering apprehension, according to Detective Sgt. Ed Sawyer.

A woman who police think told Goodine he could use the house was not on the premises during the standoff, Googins said.

The building had been vacant a while, said a worker at General Courier, next door to the house.

Police closed Broadway between Anthoine Street and Kelly Street, disrupting morning commuters. The road reopened just after 8 a.m.

South Portland police have searched the house and have found material they would only classify as “evidence,” Sawyer said. Googins said there may be additional charges filed against Goodine.

On Active Duty: Tiana Schneider

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (July 21, 2005): Spc. Tiana Schneider of Cape Elizabeth is a saxophonist in the 1st Armored Division Army Band, based in Wiesbaden, Germany.

A 2003 graduate of Cape Elizabeth High School, she recently returned home on leave with her boyfriend, Cpl. Chris Nicholas of Wisconsin, a trumpet player with the band.

“The weather has been so nice here,” Schneider said, especially because of the ocean breezes, which she does not have in central Germany.

Her band, one of four Army bands in Europe, has been very busy this spring and early summer, playing as many as two change-of-command ceremonies a day, and traveling extensively around Germany and throughout Western Europe to perform.

“Four out of six days we’re on a bus,” she said. The band is also playing at German beer festivals, which often include parades, in which they perform German traditional folk songs and marches, as well as American marches and jazz.

Recently, Schneider, 20, was among those sent to a change-of-command ceremony in Baumholder, another American military installation in Germany. The ceremony was held despite bucketing rain.

“I guess the only good thing about that day was there was no breeze,” she said. “There was so much water in my sax” she was dumping it out of the bell between songs and some keys stuck.

Schneider is reenlisting on Aug. 1. Her father, retired Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Charles Schneider, will give her her reenlistment oath, as he did when she enlisted.

She has volunteered to spend two years in Korea, starting in the middle of next year. Nicholas has also done so, and they hope to be stationed near Seoul with an Army band there.

“We definitely have the best job in the military,” Schneider said. Though some of her fellow soldiers think she has a 9-to-5 job, she tells them she has no weekends off, and an unpredictable schedule. But she does get to meet generals face-to-face after playing music for them, and has seen a lot of Europe while traveling to and from performances.

“I’m having a lot of fun with this,” she said.

“On Active Duty” is a continuing series profiling members of the community serving in the armed forces. If a member of your family is on active duty in any branch of the military, please contact Editor Jeff Inglis.

Tsunami-hit region a long way from recovery

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (July 21, 2005): Residents of the areas where the tsunami hit last December are still in need of help to get back on their feet, a Catholic bishop from southern India told the Scarborough Rotary Club Tuesday.

Bishop Yoohanon “John” Mar Chrysostom Kalloor, bishop of Marthandam, in the southernmost district at the very southern tip of India, said he was two miles from the shore on Dec. 26, 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami struck his area.

He was in the middle of ordaining two young men into the priesthood, and went to the coast. “It was a tragic situation,” Kalloor said. He said he didn't see "even a single human life” in the first village he went to, struck by a 200-foot-high wall of water generated by an earthquake below the ocean floor off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, about 2,000 miles away.

In his local area, about 3,000 people were killed, most of them Christian, he said. “It was a massive burial.”

Local and international aid agencies started 42 camps for people displaced by the tsunami, which ruined homes and other buildings, destroyed boats and fishing equipment, and caused people to fear the sea from which many of them earn their living.

“Under my care, there were 5,000 people in four camps,” Kalloor said.

He told of a conversation he had with one boy whose entire family had died, and whose house had collapsed.

“He came and told me, ‘Bishop, I don’t want your food. I don’t want your clothes. I don’t want your money,’” Kalloor said. When Kalloor asked him why, “He said, ‘I want to die.’”

“I talked with him for hours,” brought the boy back to his own residence and helped take care of him for the next month and a half while the boy got his life back together.

In his village, the tsunami orphaned 150 children and widowed 50 women. “That is one small village,” Kalloor said, out of the vast area affected by the disaster.

But the need in his community did not begin with the tsunami.

As many as 700 children need money to help pay for school uniforms, shoes, textbooks and bookbags.

Every morning when he finishes Mass or prayers, “there are so many people waiting for me to ask some favors,” Kalloor said.

“Leprosy is a big problem.” He was once a director of a sanitorium that housed 4,000 lepers, who are often disowned by their families and left homeless.

“I got them under the bridges of the roads. They didn’t have homes,” he said.

In his diocese, which he has led since 1998, Kalloor has started a university and a home for lepers, as well as a new orphanage – in addition to the existing four – to house orphans from the tsunami.

That is part of the relief effort, which began with giving every family a small room in large tents, and providing them with food, water and sanitation.

The next step toward recovery is just beginning, he said, with plans to purchase fishing boats and nets.

“Ninety-some percent of the people who died in this area are poor fishermen,” Kalloor said. “Some of them are afraid to go to the sea,” but it is their best hope for providing for their families.

The final stage of relief is to build homes for the families, on land the government has purchased a ways back from the shore.

“Each day, I pray never to see such a scene again” as he saw after the tsunami struck, Kalloor said.

Editorial: Home for hospice

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (July 21, 2005): The people working to bring a hospice to Scarborough probably hadn’t expected to encounter much objection to their idea. After all, each of us will die someday, and many of us – myself included – have a relative or friend who used hospice services before dying.

Hospice of Southern Maine has run into a little bit of resistance, mostly residents concerned about traffic on the small roads off Maple Avenue, including Hunnewell Road, where Agnes Desfosses has donated nearly five acres to the agency.

Traffic is a valid concern, and a common one, about new developments, whether residential, commercial or a bit of both, like this one. Hospice organizers plan to provide housing for up to 16 patients, as well as space for family members to stay, and so it sounds a bit residential, perhaps along the lines of an apartment building. But it will also be a non-profit health care building, with doctors, nurses and other professionals helping to care for the bodies and minds of the patients there.

The Town Council is working on a provision that would allow a hospice building in any residential area of town – while leaving hospices barred from commercial and industrial zones.

It would seem better for everyone, not least the patients and their families, to place a hospice in a neighborhood than a business park, even if neighborhood roads were not originally designed to handle the hospice’s additional traffic.

And it’s not unreasonable for residents to be concerned about the potential effects of such a project on their surroundings. It’s likely this type of objection would be raised in any neighborhood the hospice group selected.

This particular neighborhood has long been vocally concerned about traffic in their neighborhood. In late 2002, they successfully lobbied the Town Council to slow down traffic in their area, getting approval for the installation of new stop signs that they hoped would discourage people from cutting through the area to avoid the Oak Hill intersection.

Having recently reclaimed their roads from speeding short-cutters, they are rightly wary of having more traffic come through. The hospice will bring visitors, staff and deliveries. A traffic study would be able to tell more accurately than anyone’s speculation – either the residents’ or hospice organizers’ – how much more traffic it would all mean, and such a study should be conducted before the planning process gets much farther along.

The neighborhood is a quiet residential space, with children playing outside, and where adults jog, walk and cycle. The residents there have a right to that environment, just as the hospice group has a right to propose to the town their project and potential remedies for any negative impacts the project might have.

One possible solution could be to have the hospice group install sidewalks in nearby areas where pedestrian traffic is common. Sidewalks are missing from the neighborhoods along and adjoining Maple Avenue, and could provide increased safety for the runners, walkers and others using the roads there. They would also narrow the roads even more, which could tend to slow traffic.

There may be a place that would be better in an ideal world, but in this, the real world, five acres at no cost provide the perfect spot as far as the hospice is concerned. Buying a similarly sized lot in Scarborough or elsewhere in Southern Maine would be very expensive, perhaps prohibitively so, given the hospice’s desire to be close to major roads like the Maine Turnpike and Route 1.

Hospice is an important aspect of health care, and a crucial support for dying people and their loved ones. The neighbors’ concerns are not insurmountable, and the need for hospice is great. We hope that the hospice group can work with the town and residents to find a way to bring hospice services to Southern Maine.

Jeff Inglis, editor