Sean C. Morgan
The public is invited to the fourth Annual Jim Bean Memorial Safety Fair from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday at the Sweet Home Police Department, 1950 Main St.
Admission is free.
The event will include free document shredding, a prescription drug turn-in event, a bicycle rodeo for children, free helmets for the first 100 rodeo participants and free licensing to anyone bringing a bicycle.
Children’s ID kits will be available, including pictures and fingerprinting.
Emergency services vehicles from the city, county and state, including fire, ambulance and police, will be available to tour.
Cindi Robeck, who is organizing the event, wanted to emphasize the shredding service to help prevent identity theft.
People should bring any sensitive documents, she said. An industrial-sized shredder, provided by Linn-Co Credit Union, will be available.
If anyone has any questions about whether a document is sensitive, Robeck said, “shred it. Be safe.”
“Identity thieves dumpster dive, and they look for personal information discarded in household trash,” said Sweet Home Police Detective Cyndi Pichardo. “And a lot of people don’t take time to shred and their mail stacks up. The nice thing about the shredder truck is you can shred a box all at once.”
Information from credit card offers can be combined with other information found in stolen mail to create a credit profile of the victim, Pichardo said.
“I would encourage everybody to go through their file cabinets and pare down their archives,” Pichardo said. With the digital storage available at banks and at home, it’s not really necessary to keep seven years of tax documents, bank statements and other records.
For more information, contact Robeck at (541)367-6243, extension 245, or by email at [email protected].