Travel Advisory – Aberdeen, Washington Unsafe @ Any Speed

from Montesano Today

by Tom Frederiksen

Aberdeen, WA. — Montesano Today [area blog] is forced to issue the following travel advisory for travel in and around the Aberdeen Washington area until further notice.  As recently reported in the Aberdeen Daily World, the city parks are now completely unsafe for adults or children due to the hypodermic needles discarded by drug users.

Dismayed residents gathered before the deaf eared Aberdeen city council relating their concern that the recent push by police to move the vagrants, prostitutes, and drug users off the downtown streets has only moved them into the residential neighborhoods. And the problem is growing.

Frightened Aberdeen city residents are now arming themselves with handguns against the drug users and vagrants who are becoming more aggressive, as reported in the Daily World.

Repeated crime associated with the drug users and vagrants has made a trip into the Wal Mart shopping section hazardous.  Travelers are advised to lock their doors and windows, especially women traveling alone, when exiting the shopping center as vagrants are pushing themselves into vehicles in attempts to demand and extort money.

Prostitutes and beggars wander the parking areas, approaching people exiting their cars, 

demanding money; reports of cars being keyed for not paying are common.

Avoid all ATM machines!

Many Montesano residents, myself included, do not let our wives and daughters shop in Aberdeen due to the threats to their safely without our accompaniment currently.  Due to the continuing and increasing violence and threats that traveling through or shopping in the city creates, we advise joining Elma and start using the facilities available in Olympia.

Residents in Aberdeen continue to wonder why the situation is and has deteriorated to the point that many in the meetings with the City Council referenced “moving to Montesano” to get away from it.  Unable to stop electing the same individuals to office, and expecting different results….. they seem perplexed.  Unable to help themselves.

Montesano residents are advised to be on the look out for Aberdeen residents trying to escape.

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UPDATE:   Sept 30th 2013  Apparently it is getting worse.  Now the vagrants are peering into windows.  One of the reasons Aberdeen is in the state it is in was on the radio this morning claiming the solution is to keep an eye on them.  Right Alice……congratulations on twenty years in the Aberdeen Council correcting the problem.  You Aberdeen residents should return her to office this election…..I am sure she will do better now.  Right.  What a joke.

UPDATE: Oct 3rd 20123 – It got worse.  In a failed attempt to justify the money their department receives, thedirector of Grays Harbor Public Health, Joan Brewster,  released an op-ed today (DW this date)  about the number of nice shiny new needles they trade out through her office into the community….and I quote”  ”550,000 needles so far this year”.  That’s right, your county government is putting out over a half million of them…well, more as it’s only October and the party season is coming up.   My advice for traveling to Aberdeen….if you must.…watch where you step and don’t touch anything.  Rather than address the problem, they are baking the drug users a cake…..expect more coming – Aberdeen has the welcome mat out.   There are millions of needles around that place as a result of the city catering to them.  As one reader wrote me, “we don’t need protection from the Aberdeen drug users, we need protection from the County Health Department”.

The county cares so much about these people they say they must help them with free needles.  don’t die today….just die a little bit today….and some more tomorrow….here we will help you…… No one would treat an animal this way, yet – the City of Aberdeen does.

UPDATE 9 Oct 2013 – we have received so many letters from Montesano residents expressing similar concerns about shopping in Aberdeen due to the safety, that we are relating a public service announcement:

MONTESANO RESIDENTS SHOPPING CONVOY

Montesano residents that must visit the Wal Mart shopping area are advised that a formal convoy for Saturday shopping trips will meet at the West freeway entrance in Montesano at 10:00 am.  The convoy will proceed to a secure parking area in Aberdeen where volunteers will watch the vehicles.  Departure from the lot back to Montesano at 12 noon sharp.  Those that miss the departure are advised to travel out of the parking lot with caution and proceed directly out of the city.  Lock all windows and doors!

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NOTE 9 Oct 2013.  I don’t usually comment on these things, but today the Facebook community (I don’t do FB) apparently picked up on this column here in the Harbor. Where we usually receive about 500 or so visitors daily, being a small local focus blog, today – as of this writing, we expect about 25-30,000 individual visitors during this 24 hour period, a bit of a jump in traffic–hit a nerve Aberdeen?  Along with this kind of traffic comes the expected mail.  I will respond as follows from the few complaints.  Save your writing to me. I didn’t give your city parks to the drug users over your children. It wasn’t me that made the decision to turn your shopping areas into crime zones that any husband or father would warn his family about or feel uneasy about letting them shop there.  It wasn’t me that filled your city sewer systems with used needles that flood to the surface covering your town during heavy rains.  And it isn’t me handing out close to a million free new needles into your community.  That would be your county health department under the nose and with the support of your city leaders.

You might, however, write your city council members, Mayor, and police department who have made the choice that you and your family are unimportant.  How a community could sacrifice their public parks and areas to drug users and vagrants over their children is beyond me.  How a community could return any of them to office only serves as a public policy example of a failed community.  Frankly, the County Commissioners should abate the entire place and put it under county authority.  Aberdeen is a failed city.  And I stand by that statement.