Baker City police log details two jail bookings, traffic stops

Two Baker City men landed in jail on May 5 as local officers moved through a busy stretch of patrol work that also included traffic stops, warnings and citations across Baker County.

Eric Michael Nickos, 35, was arrested at 2:56 p.m. in the 2400 block of Fifth Street on a probation-violation charge and was jailed. A few hours earlier, at 4:56 a.m., Aaron La Varr Daniels, 47, was arrested in the 1800 block of Plum Street and booked on fourth-degree assault, failure-to-appear warrants from Baker County Circuit Court and violation of a release agreement.

The Baker County Sheriff’s Office and Baker City Police Department handled the arrests along with a mix of calls in the county’s May 3 and May 4 activity log, including several traffic stops that ended in warnings and citations. That combination of enforcement and routine traffic work points to the day-to-day pressure local officers face, where court supervision issues, warrant arrests and street-level patrols all land on the same shift.

Nickos’ arrest on a probation-violation charge suggests the court was already monitoring his case, and the new booking likely put him back into the system for another round of review. Daniels’ case carried more moving parts: an assault allegation, outstanding warrants and a release-agreement violation all came together in one arrest in east Baker City.

Under Oregon law, fourth-degree assault is generally a Class A misdemeanor, though it can be elevated in some aggravating circumstances, including repeated assaults or when the victim is pregnant. Even at the misdemeanor level, the charge matters in a small city like Baker City because it usually involves a direct confrontation, often between people who already know each other.

Daniels’ name had already appeared in a Baker City Herald public-safety log on May 21, 2025, when he was listed in a domestic case involving strangulation and fourth-degree assault in the 1800 block of Plum Street. That earlier record gives his latest arrest added weight as one more public-safety entry tied to the same part of town.

Taken together, the log shows more than two jail bookings. It shows probation enforcement, warrant service, neighborhood-level calls and traffic policing working at the same time, with Baker City officers and the sheriff’s office handling the sort of steady, unglamorous cases that shape public safety here every day.