Sean C. Morgan
Sweet Home police reported
fewer law enforcement issues dur-
ing this year’s Jamboree than usu-
al.
“There were a lot of minor calls,
very few disturbances and very few
major calls for service compared
to Jamborees in the past,” said Sgt.
Jeff Lynn. “Friday night and Satur-
day morning was very quiet.”
It was probably the quietest
Jamboree night he’s seen, he said.
Police responded to a couple of dis-
turbances.
There were several more minor
fights reported the following day,
along with numerous noise com-
plaints around town but not about
the Jamboree itself and a few prob-
lems with vehicles blocking drive-
ways and roadways. Few of the
reported fights resulted in arrests or
citations.
Overall, the problems were
fewer, he said. Police responded
only to a couple of situations on
the grounds. Improved beer garden
security helped minimize problems
there.
That isn’t to say that the week-
end was completely quiet. Lynn
noted he was speaking in compari-
son to other Jamboree events. The
police log provided by the depart-
ment is usually about four pages
per day. Three pages is a slow day,
and five is a busy day. From 2 p.m.
Thursday through 2 p.m. Monday,
the log was 30 pages long. Normal-
ly, it would be 12 to 20 pages for the
same period.
Sweet Home Police Depart-
ment received assistance from Linn
County Sheriff’s Of
ice, Lebanon
Police Department and Albany Po-
lice Department.
“Their role was pretty much to
monitor and run traf
fic in the area,”
Lynn said.
One of the biggest calls was
a single-vehicle crash in the 4900
block of Main, Lynn said. The sole
occupant was injured and trans-
ported to Samaritan Lebanon Com-
munity Hospital by medics. He was
charged with driving under the in-
fluence.
The next day, a resident re-
ported the same vehicle stolen,
Lynn said. Police are investigating
and following up on a possible un-
authorized use of a motor vehicle
charge.
Police didn’t get involved, but
a woman, a local resident, also was
spotted on top of the high school’s
main gym during the Jamboree,
Lynn said. She was trespassed from
the location.
“I will have to say, for us, the
majority of it went really smoothly,
and no major incidents happened,”
Lynn said.
The heat, however, kept med-
ics busy as Saturday turned out to
be the hottest day of the year thus
far.
“We were very busy on the
Jamboree grounds with all kinds
of medical stuff,” said Fire Chief
Mike Beaver. Saturday, paramed-
ics were busy outside the Jamboree
with three motor vehicle crashes
and three “code three,” emergency,
transports to the hospital.
Among them was a fatal motor-
cycle accident (see page 1), Beaver
said, and a crash in the 4900 block
of Main.
The Sweet Home Fire and Am-
bulance District logged 17 calls on
Saturday, Beaver said, but he doesn’t
know how many people used the
district’s services at the
first aid tent
on the Jamboree grounds. People
were walking up with bee stings,
burns and heat exhaustion.
Those were “heat and diabetes
problems completely related to the
heat because it was beastly hot,”
Beaver said.
One woman at the event had
a temperature of 104 degrees from
exposure to the heat. She was
transported code three to the hos-
pital. That was probably the most
significant call on the grounds, he
said.
Beaver measured the tem-
perature at Camp Attitude Satur-
day afternoon and had a reading of
102.3 degrees with humidity of 28
percent. His weather service phone
app told him it was 103 at the Foster
weather station.
The key to dealing with the
hot weather is to drink a lot of wa-
ter and fluids with electrolytes, he
said. There isn’t much shade on the
grounds, other than in Sankey Park
or under canopies, but getting into
shade intermittently can help.