Following months of complaints from residents about derelict RVs being parked or abandoned on city streets or private property and a rise in people camping on the streets, the City of Centralia passed a new RV parking and camping ordinance last month.
The ordinance was meant to prohibit camping on the streets and limit RVs parked on any street, alley or public parking lot to 16 hours or less. Additionally, it gives officers the authority to impound RVs.
Throughout the beginning of August, residents began complaining on social media about the ordinance not being enforced and people in RVs still creating issues around the city.
This prompted Centralia Police Chief Stacy Denham to post an open letter to the community on the police department’s Facebook page and address concerns publicly during Tuesday night’s Centralia City Council meeting.
While the ordinance was approved by the city council and was meant to go into effect on July 31, it still has to be approved by the Washington state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) to ensure it meets state law standards, Denham wrote.
AOC officials discovered several discrepancies related to penalties, time to respond to violations and fees that need to be amended before approval.
“The city attorney is currently working on the requested changes so they will be accepted by AOC, but until then we cannot enforce them as laws,” Denham said in the letter.
He added it’s not abnormal for the AOC to request amendments to municipal ordinances before approving them. However, some Centralia community members are still accusing the police department of not doing their job.
“There’s still a process that has to occur before we can actually enforce that law,” Denham said at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Centralia City Councilor Max Vogt echoed Denham’s sentiments.
“It’s really important, when citizens get angry and they want to pile on our various departments, to understand the bureaucracy we’re facing on a lot of issues,” Vogt said.
During Tuesday night’s meeting, one local business owner, Joseph Gillum, spoke about an RV he dealt with last weekend. Prior to this past weekend, his business on Lum Road — near the homeless encampment at Blakeslee Junction — was broken into multiple times. A truck and trailer were also stolen, he said.
Last Thursday, an RV was towed from the nearby Centralia Outlets and left on his property. Initially, a responding Centralia Police Department officer allowed two women, who claimed they were trying to fix the RV and lived in it, to remain on his property on Friday.
On Saturday, Gillum called officers back after he discovered a third woman sitting in one of his vehicles. The woman had a warrant and was arrested. The two other women then returned with batteries for the RV.
Both Gillum and his girlfriend, Jenni Miller, wanted them trespassed so they could tow the RV off their property, as Gillum believed the RV was not immediately fixable. Another two men showed up in an old Honda and on a motorcycle, claiming to be there to fix the RV as well, which Gillum doubted.
On Sunday, a Lewis County Sheriff’s Office deputy responded after learning the RV might be towed to Schaefer County Park. The deputy discovered both women were using fake IDs and had outstanding warrants. They were arrested.
“A (Centralia Police Department) officer encountered this motorhome at Centralia Outlets,” Gillum said during Tuesday night’s meeting. “He didn’t properly ID these two girls because come to find out both of these girls had warrants out of Kitsap. If that officer ID’d those two girls, they would have never been on my property.”
Miller has been documenting their interactions with those involved with the RV and the police response on her Facebook page. In both Miller’s and Gillum’s opinions, police officers need better training. The RV has since been towed off Gillum’s property.
Denham responded, saying his officers were bound to work within the confines of the law. Currently, state law still dictates if someone is living in any vehicle, RVs included, the police department can’t tow the vehicle.
“We can’t force people to move along without having some place for them to go, and that’s why the city has been working very desperately to find housing that people can actually go to,” Denham said.
He added the RV being left on private property further complicated the issue. Denham said some confusion exists among his own officers about current trespassing, theft and impounding laws.
“If we pull over a stolen vehicle for example, we pull that vehicle over and arrest the drivers … We can’t search that vehicle. And people don’t understand why we can’t search that vehicle,” Denham said. “That person should have no right or privacy to that vehicle but the state has chosen that they do.”
His officers must contact the stolen vehicle's registered owner for permission to search it after the suspect has been arrested.
“To me, that’s kind of a banana republic. I’m not sure what’s happening, but we shouldn’t be doing that,” Denham added.
In the case of the RV dumped on Gillum’s property, Denham said the need for a warrant to search the RV made it a lower priority since the warrant process is time consuming and his understaffed department has a lot of other cases to handle.
Given the understaffing issues, other calls such as domestic violence and robbery have to take higher priority, Dehnam said. In a phone call with The Chronicle on Wednesday morning, Denham added his officers were on the verge of discovering the two women in the RV left on Gillum’s property had provided fake IDs.
As for when Centralia’s new RV parking and camping ordinance will finally go into effect, Denham has no set date but expects the city attorney to finish amendments soon and hopes the AOC will approve it within the next couple of weeks.
Miller’s posts about the RV can be found at https://www.facebook.com/jenni.millerragsdale.
To watch Tuesday night’s city council meeting, visit https://www.cityofcentralia.com/406/View-City-Council-Meetings.
