CAMARADERIE FUELS COMEBACK
BUILDING ON A BIG YEAR
Players say brotherhood turned Seattle’s season around and is behind Sunday’s momentous win. SPORTS, 1B
Olympics, world championships in the sights of Bainbridge cyclist Kiel Reijnen. SPORTS, 1B
TUESDAY JANUARY 20, 2015
$1.00
ALLYN | BAINBRIDGE IS. | BANGOR | BELFAIR | BREMERTON GIG HARBOR | HANSVILLE | INDIANOLA | KEYPORT | KINGSTON MANCHESTER | OLALLA | PORT GAMBLE | PORT LUDLOW | PORT ORCHARD | POULSBO | SEABECK | SILVERDALE | SOUTHWORTH | SUQUAMISH
Martin Luther King Jr.
Errant 911 calls tying up lines
Honoring his dream
Reaching for vision of justice
■ Recent strife
drives message at county event
By Chris Henry
chenry@kitsapsun.com 360-792-9219
FAIRGROUNDS— Kitsap County’s annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr., like others across the country, took place against the backdrop of what has arguably been the most racially divisive year in decades. The deaths in 2014 of two black men — Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York — at the hands of police officers, and widespread protests that followed, were on Andrine Joyner’s mind as she filed in with the crowd of roughly 350 to honor the slain civil rights leader King. Joyner, a Bremerton mother of two adult sons and two young grandsons, said national events in 2014, which included the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice with a toy gun in Cleveland, “didn’t make me bitter. But it made me more vigilant.” Joyner hoped the celebration — hosted by Ebenezer
■ Dispatchers’
attention is being diverted
African Methodist Episcopal Church, Kitsap County, the city of Bremerton and Olympic College — would be a constructive call to action. “I pray that it will bring the community together and open our eyes that we really need each other, she said. Most of the speakers — elected officials and black community leaders — steered clear of current events. Keynote speaker Drayton Jackson, an Olympic College student, touched on the topic after talking about King’s emphasis on education. “I want to talk about how he used wisdom and education to defeat his enemies,” said Jackson, who is a member of the Kitsap Sun’s editorial board. “How is it that we don’t see in today’s time that education is needed to get back to service?” Jackson cited Washington state’s struggles to fully fund basic education. Education alone isn’t enough, he said. What’s needed is education built on the character King said was needed to address injustice and inequity head on without violence. King’s strategy of nonviolence was anything
By Josh Farley
360-792-9227 jfarley@kitsapsun.com
See MLK, 4A
PHOTOS BY STEVE ZUGSCHWERDT/SPECIAL TO THE KITSAP SUN
Olympic College student Drayton Jackson delivers a speech at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.
Zariah Huston performs as part of the MLK Community Praise Dancers at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration held Monday at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds.
A whole world of info in their hands
By Martha Bellisle Associated Press
■ Devices will bring rich learning
opportunities to poor African kids
chenry@kitsapsun.com 360-792-9219
MANCHESTER— Port Orchard Rotary member Bob Cairns is hellbent on improving the lives of school-age children in sub-Saharan Africa. Through Rotary, the Manchester resident has worked in polio vaccination clinics and raised scholarship money for orphans who otherwise wouldn’t attend school.
Cairns’ latest campaign, to equip students in the Kenyan outback with computer technology, is gaining ground thanks to a device called the Raspberry Pi. About the size of a deck of cards, the Raspberry Pi can accommodate a 32-gigabyte storage drive loaded with a staggering buffet of information: Wikipedia for schools, Khan Academy videos on a range of topics, K-12 textbooks, e-books, reference materials, educational
See DIALING, 2A
Judicial review sought for mentally ill cases
EDUCATION SPOTLIGHT
By Chris Henry
BREMERTON — A single phone in South Kitsap has dialed 911 thousands of times in the past year, though emergency responders have never been able to find the caller. The number has been identified by the county’s 911 center as an “uninitialized” phone: It lacks a service plan and can only dial the emergency line. And that’s what it’s done — more than 4,000 times between July and the end of November. That amounts to more than one call an hour. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, according to Kitsap County Central Communications Director Richard Kirton. “That’s our top problem phone right now,” he said. “But that’s not the only phone we get these kinds of calls from.” Cellphones have made it easier to reach a first responder in an emergency. But Kirton said the phones have also increased 911 hangups, which eat up dispatchers’ time. Dispatchers make every effort to ensure callers are safe — sometimes even sending a police officer to check in on them. But mistaken calls to 911 tie up dispatcher time, which can have consequences, Kirton said. “That’s 30 seconds or a minute or two where that (911 line) is in use and can’t be accessed by someone who has an actual emergency,” he said. Kitsap’s 911 dispatch center — which has eight landlines and 10 wireless lines — conducted a survey in the spring to determine how often it was getting 911 hangup calls from
MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)
Rotary International members Chris and Bob Cairns power up a pair of tablets that are used with a device called the Raspberry Pi. The device is loaded with e-books and other learning resources. Add a Wi-Fi card, and it is able to become a wireless server for tablets.
games and more. The Raspberry Pi, which sells on Amazon for around $35, was developed in 2012 by researchers at the University of Cambridge who wanted to give young people a low-cost way to get into computer programming.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation promotes innovative uses for the device. The e-learning package, called RACHEL (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and See SPOTLIGHT, 4A
SEATTLE — One by one, more than a dozen parents and other family members choked back tears Monday as they urged lawmakers to pass a bill to remove what they say are roadblocks to getting treatment for mentally ill people in crisis. “Joel’s Law” will save lives, they testified, by allowing family members to ask a judge to review cases whenever a designated mental health professional decides against detaining someone who could be a danger to themselves or others. The measure was named for Joel Reuter, who was
AVIAN FLU HITS CLALLAM
GET UP! SPRING AWAITS
NO GUNS IN THE GALLERY
Officials are warning backyard chicken owners to keep their fowl away from wild birds after the virus is detected in birds near Port Angeles.
Cross-country skiing and snowshoeing offer great opportunities for getting conditioned for spring hikes, according to Seabury Blair.
Following the lead of the state Senate, leaders of the state House on Monday opt to not allow open-carry firearms in the gallery.
STATE, 3A
SPORTS, 1B
STATE, 3A
suicidal when he was fatally shot by Seattle police in 2013. His parents, Doug and Nancy Reuter, told the Senate Committee on Human Services, Mental Health and Housing that they repeatedly tried to get the state to step in and force their son into treatment but repeatedly were turned away, with disastrous results. “His illness turned him into a paranoid stranger, causing him to say things he would never say in his right mind,” Nancy Reuter said of her son. She and her husband made calls to the Department of Social and Health See REVIEW, 2A
48˚ 33˚
Fog in the morning. 10A
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