West Valley View - April 12, 2017

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 WADDELL MAN ACCUSED OF IMPERSONATING OFFICER, PAGE 4

westvalleyview.com — the newspaper of Avondale, Buckeye, Goodyear, Litchfield Park & Tolleson, AZ 50¢ Wednesday, April 12, 2017 (623) 535-8439

INSIDE

EMCC celebrates 25 years

ALL THEIR EGGS IN 1 BASKET

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Avondale campus has developed with community since opening in 1992 by Glenn Gullickson staff writer

When Estrella Mountain Community College opened in Avondale in 1992, there was just empty land around a campus with three buildings. Over the years, the city grew around the Dysart Road campus, which has grown to nine buildings as it celebrates its silver anniversary year. The milestone will be marked Saturday with the Silver Anniversary Gala at the Wigwam in Litchfield Park, an event that will launch the Alumni Legacy Scholarship Fund. EMCC President Ernest Lara, who has been with the college since its inception, remembered the landscape when the campus opened with 1,012 students. “There wasn’t anything around us whatsoever,” Lara said. Originally called Estrella Mountain Community College Center, a satellite of Glendale Community College, the school expanded course offerings for a student body that’s grown almost every semester to 14,000 students and earned accolades as one of the top community colleges in the nation.

KID ZONE Avondale holds KidFest celebration. See photos on Page 3.

VANDALS STRIKE Historic West Valley cemetery vandalized — Page 5.

View photo by Jordan Christopher

BUCKEYE SISTERS PIPER GAGE, 2, left, and Riley, 11 months, work together to collect eggs during Buckeye’s annual Spring Celebration April 8 at Sundance Park. To see all photos from this shoot, go to www.westvalleyview.com/pictures.

(See EMCC on Page 2)

DAILY UPDATES! News Updates and fresh Classified ads posted Monday - Friday at 4:30 p.m. online at www.westvalleyview.com Volume 32, No. 01 24 Pages 1 Section Circulation: 78,377 INDEX Classifieds .................... 20 Editorials & Letters .......... 6 Obituaries ...................... 18 Sports ........................... 10 Briefcase ......................... 9 9 Days a Week............... 17 Recycle this paper

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Tolleson police officers equipped with body cameras by Emily Toepfer assistant editor

The last time the Tolleson Police Department used any sort of cameras to record calls for service, VHS tapes were still around. Now, officers are being equipped with digital body cameras that store data in the cloud. As body cameras became more common among police departments in the last few years, Tolleson let other agencies test them out and work out any kinks, Police Chief Wayne Booher said. “We feel like that was a really good move to sit back and just

kind of let the dust settle a little bit,” he said. “There’s been a lot of changes — stuff that’s gone through the state Legislature as far as how they’re going to regulate this stuff. “We didn’t want to go out and invest all this money and have things change to where we’d have to put more money into changing something or the process or the way the evidence is captured and stored.” In January, the Tolleson City Council approved an agreement with Taser International to provide 30 body cameras, chargers, docking stations and

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mounts at a cost of $33,000, which also included one year of storage for the video, Booher said. After the first year, the city will pay a storage fee of about $2,200 per month, depending on the amount of video that is recorded and saved, he said. Everyone in the department will get a camera, including officers, detectives and supervisors, Booher said. Detective Erden Jakupi, who has been with the Tolleson Police Department for five years, said he (See Body cameras on Page 4)

View photo by Jordan Christopher

TOLLESON Police Officer Erden Jakupi models a body camera last month. The department recently outfitted all of its officers with the recording devices.

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