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Wanted: The power to ping State Sen. John McCoy used his iPad to track the crook who stole his iPhone. He now hopes the experience will help him pass a law allowing police to do the same thing. By Eric Stevick Herald Writer
TULALIP — A burglary at his home earlier this month has strengthened a state lawmaker’s resolve to let police more quickly track cellphone signals to catch crooks and look for people whose lives might be in danger. Sen. John McCoy got a
firsthand demonstration of how the power of pinging cellphone towers can combat crime. On July 13, someone broke into his Tulalip home. Early that morning, the burglar stole keys, McCoy’s iPhone, and a rental car parked in the garage. The couple was home at the time, but didn’t hear the intruder. McCoy called Tulalip police.
When an officer arrived, McCoy used an iPad to electronically track the whereabouts of the missing phone. He relayed to a Tul- Sen. John alip police officer McCoy the phone’s move- Thinks police ments as it traveled should have from Snohomish to power to ping Everett. The Tulalip cellphones. officer, in turn, contacted police from other agencies. State law prevented the officers from pinging the phone on
their own and without a warrant, McCoy said. “I kept them updated because they couldn’t do it” without jeopardizing the investigation, McCoy said. The suspect, 35, was stopped and arrested in north Everett within three hours of the break-in. Based on information relayed from cellphone towers, it appeared the burglar took an illegal U-turn on U.S. 2, drove to See Ping, back page, this section
Poof goes the squirrel — and your electricity
EVERETT — Trouble at a substation in Everett cut power last month to about 7,000 homes. The culprit turned out to be a furry, four-legged creature with sharp teeth, a bushy tail and a taste for seeds and nuts. The apparently curious squirrel, likely an Eastern gray, became an electrical conductor when it
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squeezed into some equipment. The rodent was zapped into oblivion, likely by 7,200 volts of electricity. Each year, squirrels, birds and other wildlife account for about 17 percent — or 270 — of the nearly 1,600 power outages reported to the Snohomish County Public Utility District. In comparison, car crashes account for about 4 percent, or roughly 60 outages a year. Downed trees and
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Vol. 114, No. 169 © 2014 The Daily Herald Co.
Inside
Business . . . . . A7 Classified . . . . B5
Comics . . . . . . B2 Crossword . . . B2
Snark attack Just when you thought it was safe to watch TV again: “Sharknado 2: The Second One,” a sequel to last summer’s campfest, airs Wednesday on the SyFy network (Short Takes, Page B4). After chomping on Los Angeles in the first movie, the shark-storm takes a bite Dear Abby . . . B2 Horoscope . . . B8
See boeing, back page, this section
of the Big Apple this time around. When it comes time to make “Sharknado 3,” The Buzz hopes the filmmakers opt for gritty realism and have the shark tornado gnaw on a mobile home park in Oklahoma. Money’s no object: A judge in Los Angeles on Monday
Lottery . . . . . . A2 Northwest . . . A5
Herald Writer
See outages, back page, this section
Critters cause 17% of PUD outages By Diana Hefley
By Dan Catchpole
the system vulnerable to outages, said Christoph Enderlein, PUD’s manager of environmental affairs. “Whether it’s a squirrel or a bird, it’s very unfortunate for the wildlife and an undesired outcome. We absolutely care because it also shows a vulnerability to the reliability of the system,” Enderlein said. Snohomish County PUD serves 327,000 customers and maintains about 115,000 poles, tens of thousands of transformers and 90 substations.
Mark Mulligan / The Herald
limbs cause about one-third of the disruptions in service. Outages caused by wildlife generally don’t last as long as when equipment is damaged by downed tree or power poles are knocked over by a car. A wildlifecaused outage may mean just locating the unfortunate animal and removing it from the equipment. Since 2001, the public utility has spent about $487,000 on wildlife protection, spokesman Neil Neroutsos said. It’s critical to address conflicts with wildlife, obviously to protect the animals and birds but also because the district doesn’t want
Jobs have dropped by about 20,000 since the late 1990s, but the state’s share of Boeing’s total workforce has grown.
EVERETT — Depending on how you measure it, Boeing has expanded or contracted in Washington since the late 1990s. Back then it had more than 100,000 workers in the state, about 20,000 more than it has now. But Washington has grown as a share of Boeing’s total workforce from about 43 percent in 1998 to 48 percent this year, according to The Daily Herald’s analysis of company employment records. After merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, Boeing shed nearly 90,000 jobs by August 2005. Contributing factors included fallout from the merger and a decline in demand for commercial airliners after the 9/11 attacks. Washington bottomed out in mid-2004 with 52,763 Boeing jobs in the state. Since then Boeing employment here has climbed to 81,724 as of June. About half those workers are at the company’s Everett facility, where it assembles its twin-aisle jetliners. Boeing’s Washington workforce has even expanded since the company set up a second 787 assembly plant in North Charleston, South Carolina. Since that facility began limited production in July 2011, Boeing has added nearly 3,000 jobs here. In recent years, though, no state has added more Boeing jobs than South Carolina — 8,359 as of June, according to the company. And California and Kansas have lost the most. After the McDonnell Douglas merger, Boeing had about 42,000 jobs in California. It has 18,394 now, which is closer to the company’s premerger total. Boeing is expected to cut more jobs in California next year as it ends production of the C-17, a military cargo airplane developed by McDonnell Douglas. Those job losses are being
Snohomish County PUD linemen (from left) Jake Morgan, Jason Heintz and Dave Schumann work to disassemble a line that has been moved underground near the marina in Everett on Friday.
Eastern gray squirrels travel on power lines, nest on transformers
Boeing jobs: Tale of the tape
Obituaries . . . A5 Opinion . . . . . A9
cleared the way for former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s record $2 billion purchase of the Los Angeles Clippers (Page C2). Earlier, doctors certified Clippers owner Donald Sterling as mentally incapacitated, to which Sterling might have noted that he’s not the guy forking over $2 billion for the Clippers. Short Takes . . B4 Sports . . . . . . C1
Not lovin’ it: Officials in Russia are steamed at McDonald’s, saying the fast-food giant misrepresented the fat content of its cheeseburgers (Page A7). Listen up, Russia: Vladimir Putin’s bare torso tells you all you need you know about the nutritional value of cheeseburgers.
— Mark Carlson, Herald staff
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