Opinion
A4
Thursday, January 20, 2022
OUR VIEW
New metric
may be key to
state police’s
staffi ng
roviding the right number of law enforce-
ment can be as important and diffi cult a
decision as providing the right kind of law
enforcement.
How do you get the number of police right? Is
there some sort of objective standard?
A number that comes up repeatedly is patrol
offi cers per capita. For instance, in 2020, the
Oregon State Police Offi cers’ Association pro-
posed a bill that would have required the state
police to have at least 15 patrol troopers per
100,000 Oregonians. At the time there were just
eight troopers per 100,000 residents. Boosting it
to 15 would have put Oregon about in the middle
of the pack nationally and helped ensure better
statewide coverage.
The bill died in committee.
The Oregon State Police no longer has 24-hour
coverage across Oregon. Wildfi res, protests and
the pandemic have stretched its coverage even
further. The OSP doesn’t just patrol state high-
ways. It investigates crimes, assists local police,
regulates gaming and enforces fi re codes, fi sh and
game regulations and more. Oregon’s population
also has grown while the number of troopers has
shrunk. When Oregon had 2.6 million people in
1980, it had 665 troopers. Now Oregon’s popu-
lation is more than 4 million and the number of
authorized troopers is 459.
Oregon State Police have traditionally used
that kind of troopers-per-capita analysis to deter-
mine its staffi ng needs. A new Oregon Secretary
of State audit recommends the OSP adopt a new
more comprehensive analysis to determine its
staffi ng levels than per capita.
OSP does look at issues beyond per capita
levels of troopers. It is concerned about workload.
It is concerned about offi cer safety. But when
it presents arguments to the Legislature about
staffi ng levels, it emphasizes per capita and com-
parisons to other states.
The audit recommends, in part, an approach
based on workload analysis.
OSP generally agreed with that recommenda-
tion. It did point out that the weakness of a time-
based workload analysis can be that it can assume
calls for service are equal. OSP may try to sup-
plement workload analysis with more qualitative
approaches, such as patrol area size, proactive
enforcement time and more.
The Oregon State Police’s budget and staff
challenges have long been a concern of the OSP
and legislators. If a workload analysis gets the
state closer to better answers, we are all for it.
P
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Kristof may serve Oregon in the long run
RICH
WANDSCHNEIDER
OTHER VIEWS
ick Kristof for chief of staff ...
or something Oregon at some
future time.
Kristof is a longtime New York
Times reporter and columnist and,
with his wife and writing partner,
Sheryl WuDunn, the author of sev-
eral books, including “Tightrope:
Americans Reaching for Hope.” The
book was published in 2020, right
before the pandemic and right before
their daughter, Caroline, graduated
“virtually” from Harvard.
Nick — that was his name
growing up in Yamhill on a 100-
acre farm that specialized in pie
cherries — and the family retreated
to the farm. They had spent sum-
mers there as the children grew and
Nicholas and Sheryl covered the
democracy movement in China and
political and economic upheaval
across Asia. The husband-and-wife
team won a Pulitzer Prize for their
reporting on Tiananmen Square in
1989.
Sheryl moved from journalism
to business, and Nicholas from
reporter to columnist after 9/11.
He won a Pulitzer for bringing the
world’s attention to genocide in
Darfur in 2006. Together again in
2009, they published “Half the Sky:
Turning Oppression into Opportu-
nity for Women Worldwide.” He’s
used his column to bring attention
to human traffi cking, poverty and
injustice in this country and across
the world, exposing corruption
and misdeeds in government and
business along the way. He’s been
called the “conscience of American
journalism.”
Back in Yamhill, where his
mother still lives on the family farm
that was always summer home for
the children, Caroline is the CEO of
N
Kristof Farms, now specializing in
cider apples and wine grapes. (The
fi rst batch of cider was a hit; wine
grapes are not yet mature.) And
Nick has announced his candidacy
for governor. The secretary of state
says that he does not meet the three-
year continuous residency require-
ment; Kristof is appealing.
What to make of it?
I doubt there is anyone in the
entire country who knows more
about the impacts of poverty,
racism, sexism, pharmaceutical
greed, the building and hollowing of
the middle class — and the positive
impacts that timely and well-run
educational and rehabilitation pro-
grams can have on individuals and
communities — than Nick Kristof.
In “Tightrope,” Nick and Sheryl
trace the lives of classmates he grew
up with in Yamhill. They follow
the school dropouts, loss of high-
paying union jobs, health problems
and drug addictions of once-prom-
ising Yamhill students as they slide
into illness, family breakups and
poverty that a previous, post-World
War II generation had seemingly
left behind. They recite interviews,
attend funerals and give the muddy
details of old friends’ collapses and
deaths by drugs, illness and suicide.
They go to other places where
rehab, early education and voca-
tional training programs are
changing lives. They look at Por-
tugal, which long ago moved the
drug problem from law enforcement
to health departments. They advo-
cate for universal health care and
major prison reform and criticize
an economy and tax structure gone
wrong enough so that just three
Americans — Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates
and Warren Buff et — “now possess
as much wealth as the entire bottom
half of the population.”
The intimate stories of old friends
and classmates, and the world-
wide search for answers to the chal-
lenges that stumped and crippled
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those once upwardly mobile fami-
lies, represent an incredible amount
of research and a vast reservoir of
human connections and knowledge
gained over decades of reporting
and engaging in the world. He might
make a great governor.
I doubt that he can get there —
and especially not now, with the con-
troversy about his residential status.
Add to that the knee-jerk rejection
of anything New York Times, and
the fact that his immediate huge war
chest came mostly from out of state,
and he will be fi ghting a steep uphill
battle.
But what if Tina Kotek, or who-
ever gets the Democratic nomination
— or gets elected, for that matter
— signs Kristof on as chief of staff ?
The political gossips couldn’t slam
him with “carpetbagger,” couldn’t
trip him up on knowledge of what’s
going on in Lake County, and
couldn’t complain about out-of-state
fi nancing.
And if we need someone or new
ideas to run health care, prisons,
human services or universities, Nick
could turn to his rolodex. If we need
a grant to move along a new pro-
gram for recovering opioid users,
he’ll know who to call, and if he
needs to fi nd an Oregonian who has
climbed out of one abyss or another,
he has them among old friends in
Yamhill.
I’m reminded that Chris Dudley,
a Portland Trail Blazer who’d done
good community work and enjoyed
popularity with fans and a wider
public, ran for Oregon governor in
2010, losing to John Kitzhaber by
only 22,000 votes. Dudley’s was a
one-shot aff air, and he’s since moved
to California.
I suggest Nick — and Caroline
— dig their heels in and be ready to
serve Oregon for the long run.
———
Rich Wandschneider is the
director of the Josephy Library of
Western History and Culture.
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