8 A
SIUSLAW NEWS ❚ SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2018
Enforce
from 1A
The county’s most recent num-
bers available are from 2012, and
they show a total of 1,479 total
arrests for the year. Four for mur-
der or non-negligent manslaughter,
10 for robbery, 134 for aggravated
assault.
“What is not going to be accu-
rate is everything outside the vio-
lent crime index,” Trapp said.
“Property crime, drug crime.
When you look at the statistics,
Lane County looks like a good
place to live. Our property crime
rate is statistically low, as is our
drug crime rate.”
The problem is, many of these
other crimes are under reported.
Trapp said the sheriff’s office
responds to two types of call for
service — threats to person safety
and threats to property.
A threat to personal safety will
garner an immediate response, but
if there’s someone breaking into a
barn, or a person finds their car
broken into in the morning, then
officers may not come out to the
scene at all. Instead, they’ll mail
out a Citizen Self Report form.
“We mail you a form in the mail
and say, ‘Write your own police
report,’” Trapp said. “The concept
for that was that we would use this
form for those very minimal crime
where the citizen didn’t want an
investigation, they just wanted a
case number to provide to their
insurance company.”
The sheriffs can only report to
the FBI crimes that have a police
report to back up the data.
However, only 50 percent of the
self-report forms are sent back in.
“We also don’t have people call-
ing,” Trapp said. “Because the last
time your house was broken into,
or your car, and you called the
office and they sent you that form,
you don’t call in again.”
One way to look at possible
crime in Dunes City is by research-
ing incoming dispatch calls from
the sheriff’s office.
For the dates between April
2017 and yesterday, only 21 inci-
dences of prowlers, suspicious
activity and trespassing were
called into dispatch.
There were 15 calls for burglary,
robbery, fraud and theft, five calls
for vandalism, five calls for
“threat” and three calls for assault.
There were zero incidences of
rape, homicide or narcotics called
in.
It should be noted that these are
just initial calls. For example, a
suspicious activity call could end
up being a tourist walking down
the street. A theft could be simply a
misunderstanding.
The Dunes City calls are rela-
tively low, particularly when com-
pared to areas just outside city lim-
its. The Glenada area, just north of
Dunes City and south of Florence,
saw eight burglary, robbery and
theft calls. There were 17 calls for
prowlers, suspicious activity and
trespassing. There were also four
calls for narcotics.
“I do know we’ve come out,”
Schleicher said about Oregon State
Police’s responses in Dunes City.
“One of them started out with a
domestic, which turned into a mail
theft, which turned into an identity
theft, and they just sentenced that
individual to four years. We get
calls. But from what I’ve seen,
there’s not a high volume for calls
for service here.”
However, as Trapp pointed out,
it could be that people are not call-
ing in to report crimes.
“What it tells me is that, any of
you who’ve had your car broken
into and you haven’t called the
sheriff, we’re kind of our own
problem,” Forsythe said. “We need
to make that call, fill the form out,
so they have statistics that actually
show what’s going on. So, if we’re
having a lot of that, please do it.
It’s not a good representation of the
crime rate that is here if we’re not
reporting it.”
Trapp understood why people
can be frustrated with self-reports
and why people don’t feel to call in
property crimes.
“It’s not the best way to police a
community, but it’s the level of
service we have,” he said. “So now
we’re trying to have community
dialogue and understand the level
of service we have. It’s not that the
sheriff’s office doesn’t care, or that
we don’t want to respond to this
community. It’s just finding the
best way to allocate the very limit-
ed resources we have on a daily
basis.”
Just how limited are the
resources of the Lane County
Sheriff’s Office? Trapp explained
the problems, beginning with
geography.
“Countywide, [the sheriff’s
office] goes from the beach, 100
miles east, and then 50 miles north
and south. It’s 4,600 square miles
and 370,000 residents — and
98,000 of them, when they call
911, rely on my office to respond.
That’s a lot of people.”
To cover that distance, the office
only has 22 deputies for patrol.
“That provides, on average,
three-and-a-half deputies on shift,
24/7,” Trapp said. “We’ve looked
across the country, and unless you
go to third world countries, you
don’t find communities less
policed than rural Lane County.
It’s just astounding. The national
average is 1.77 officers per 1,000,
and that’s just not sustainable for
us.”
The ratio dips to 0.61 for all
sheriff offices throughout Oregon.
For Lane County?
“Our sheriff’s office is 0.16,”
Trapp said. “We have 65 sworn
personnel in the police division.
We need 215 to be Oregon sheriff
average. I would love to be an
average Oregon sheriff. We can’t
even strive, honestly, to be aver-
age. We have to shoot way lower
than that bar.”
The reason for the low resources
can be found in the decline of the
timber industry.
“Lane County relied on an
agreement with the National
Forest,” Trapp said. “Harvest
receipts from timber harvest will
be shared with the counties. Lane
County had millions of dollars of
annual revenue from timber har-
vest. We didn’t create a large tax
base because of that. We’re $1.28.
You look at a comparable county
like Marion, they’re at $3, but they
don’t have timber revenue. But
we’ve had about a 93 percent
reduction in timber revenue over
the past 20 years. And so, we have
gone from a very large funded
county government with fairly
robust services to a very limited
level of service provided by our
federal funded tax base.”
Between 2007 and 2012, the
Lane County Sheriff’s laid off 95
employees, cutting the office by a
third.
“From 2010 to 2015, we didn’t
have 24 hours on duty,” Trapp said.
“At one point we were only on
duty 16 hours a day. We still
responded, but we called our
deputies from home and got them
out of bed. In 2015, with some
road fund use, we were able to get
24-hour duty back online. But it’s
just a very base level of 24-hour
coverage, and it doesn’t provide a
lot of extra service.”
Trapp said there are currently
two county deputies assigned to
the Siuslaw region, west of Walton
and to the Pacific. One is contract-
ed to cover the dunes areas on con-
tract with the state parks depart-
ment, and the other is assigned to
the rest of the region.
“It’s a big district. They stay
busy,” Trapp said. “They’re rela-
tively close geographically during
their work day and work week, but
they work 40 hours a week.”
There are a number of ways to
get more patrols in the region, but
all of them come down to raising
taxes.
“How do you structure a tax that
the public is willing to accept?”
Trapp asked. “It hasn’t occurred
yet.”
One of the first ways to create
more revenue in Lane County is
through levies, voted on by the tax
district to fund specific programs.
The levies go up for renewal every
five years. One levy has already
been put in place to enhance the
jail systems, and Bozievich, com-
missioner for western Lane
County, has been looking at anoth-
er to bolster the budget for patrols.
But relying solely on levies can
be a difficult in the long run.
“If you start having so many
rotating levies for various services,
people stop trying to connect the
dots between votes,” Bozievich
said. “If we have a jail levy come
up this year, and then a year and a
half later there’s something for
patrol, and if there’s then some-
thing for the D.A.’s office, it all
gets lost.”
Another problem is finding bal-
ance. If a levy is passed to increase
patrols on the street, then it’s possi-
ble that more people may be arrest-
ed. If that happens, another fund-
ing mechanism must be found to
fund the understaffed courts to
processes criminals. And after
they’re processed, the current jail
levy would have to be bolstered to
account for more people ending up
in jail.
“But the problem is, if we
passed a patrol levy today, you’re
not going to see those deputies for
five years,” Trapp pointed out.
“We passed a five-year levy to
enhance services at the jail five
years ago. This year, we just fin-
ished filling deputy sheriff posi-
tions. Today, 29 percent of our jail
deputies are still actively in train-
ing. Seventy percent of our work-
force has under four years of sen-
iority. We have hired 130 deputies
in four years for 50 positions.
That’s because of attrition, new
hires not making probation, people
leaving for various reasons — peo-
ple pay better than we do.
“So, the challenge is, when we
do get support for funding for
enhancing services? Sometimes
the community starts to question
whether or not we’re following
through. So, if it’s not sustainable
long-term funding, we’re spinning
our wheels. I’m hesitant about
looking at short term levies to get
us to a base level of what would be
functional.”
Another solution would be to
have a special police district, akin
to Siuslaw Valley Fire and Rescue
and Western Lane Ambulance.
“If you set that up, it would get
its own permanent tax rate for that
district,” Bozievich said. “That’s
one of the ways of permanently
solving our public safety issue.
We’ve been trying to set up an
enhanced law enforcement district
in Veneta, and we had a town hall
meeting trying to put it on the bal-
lot. I was worried about getting out
of that meeting safely. We were
talking about raising people’s
taxes. You can’t believe the num-
ber of rural residents who came out
and said, ‘I’ve got a big dog, my
own gun, and I’ve never been
robbed. I’m not paying more taxes
for patrol.’ Once you talk about
raising taxes, people on a fix
income don’t want to see their
property taxes raised.”
The City of Veneta is currently
utilizing a third possible solution to
getting patrols, and that’s through
contracting with the Lane County
Sheriff’s Office for its own
deputies.
“They get law enforcement
without all the overhead,” Trapp
said.
But the program does come
with costs.
“A single deputy contract will
come in around $180,000 a year,”
Trapp explained. “That’s the
deputy, the vehicles, radios and all
the equipment. When we contract
with a deputy for a patrol service,
we have to add in the support serv-
ices and the record management.
There’s a lot of back office work
that supports what you see in the
field from police officers. We gen-
erate a lot of paperwork and we
have dispatchers who tell us where
to go. Portions of that gets built
into the rate. As you buy more
deputies by contract, that will drop.
Each extra deputy will be more
like $150,000.”
But having one deputy may not
get the coverage that a city like
Dunes may want.
“The sheriff’s office has a 70
percent show up rate for our
deputies,” Trapp said. “Thirty per-
cent of the time they’re off doing
other things — court, training,
vacation, sick leave, you name it.
And then, while he’s on duty, he
isn’t in the community all the time
because he has to spend a day in
court in Eugene. Every time you
have to arrest someone in this
community, you have to drive
them to Eugene. There’s a lot of
things that take deputies away
from the field. So ultimately, you’ll
end up with a full deputy covering
not a lot of hours visibly in your
community, and they’re not going
to be necessarily mitigating those 3
a.m. calls because they probably
work between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.”
Ultimately,
Veneta
pays
$866,000 for four deputies and a
sergeant to keep full coverage in
the city.
The Town Hall also considered
looking into an intergovernmental
agreement (IGA) with the City of
Florence. Would Dunes City be
able to contract with the larger to
save money?
Turner stated that creating addi-
tional jurisdictions would be diffi-
cult for the city, even if Dunes City
was floating the bill.
“Our services are very commen-
surate with our tax base,” he said.
“To interrupt that with contracting
with other cities, it becomes very
burdensome for a jurisdiction. The
thing I would encourage you to
look at is the sheriff’s office. That
program is already there, it’s just a
matter of making use of it. Our
prices would not be different from
the sheriff’s office, and this is only
for the duration of the contract.
And if contract falls, what’s going
to happen? Are you going to fire
these people?”
Trapp said, “If we were to sign a
contract today, I could give you a
deputy tomorrow and it won’t crip-
ple our operation. It would impact
some of our service level to a
degree, and we would have to
backfill that, but we could do that
with overtime without taking serv-
ice away from the rest of the coun-
ty. We’re going to have an easier
time than Chief Turner with a very
small department. If he was going
to fill your contract tomorrow, he
would lose a police officer off the
shift serving Florence for a full
year to train a replacement. Then,
if you decide in a year you don’t
want to do this, I don’t have to lay
that deputy off because I have suf-
ficient attrition that I can absorb
that deputy back into my ranks.
The chief might have to lay that
position off.”
Turner also stated that creating
an IGA was a temporary fix to the
problem with law enforcement in
Lane County, a bandage that
would not address the issue as a
whole.
“You need to fix the base servic-
es, the county, to be able to provide
more law enforcement,” he said.
“That would be the permanent
fix.”
And to do that, it would mean
finding a greater tax base for the
Lane County Sheriff’s Office.
“From a personal perspective, I
am not an advocate of abdicating
my jurisdiction,” Trapp said.” I
don’t want to be misinterpreted as
trying to maintain a kingdom, but I
don’t want to lose what we have so
we’re less functional as a broader
community. I think that a healthy
sheriff’s office is one that supervis-
es and polices its full jurisdiction.
The more marginalized the office
becomes in parts of our communi-
ty, the less likely a comprehensive
approach to public safety will be
available. I think it’s critical that
we as a full community discuss
restoring county public safety
services. Let’s fix the whole sys-
tem collectively, where we all ben-
efit.”
• R ESIDENTIAL
• L AND
• C OMMERCIAL
• P ROPERTY
M ANAGEMENT
JIM HOBERG
Broker/Owner
Jim Hoberg is a Florence native,
and has been working in Real
Estate since 1989. He has served
as a Principal Broker for 28 years,
and is the “founding father” of West
Coast Real Estate Services, Inc. He
has obtained several designations
that require continuing education,
which keeps him on the cutting edge
of the industry and he is constantly
looking for ways to expand his areas
of expertise. Jim enjoys helping
people fi nd solutions to their real
estate needs and discovering why
Florence is such a great place to live.
1870 H WY . 126, S UITE A
PO B OX 3040
F LORENCE , OR
F AX 541-997-7654
541-997-7653
VISIT US ONLINE AT
WWW . JIMHOBERG . COM
2 018 Rhododendron Festi
2018 Rhododendron Festival Court
Free Jazz
Tickets for
Students
program
The Emerald City
Jazz Kings
Coronation: Thursday, May 17th, 6:30pm
Florence Event Center 541-997-1994
Tickets $10 Adults, $6 Students
eventcenter.org
Who will be the 111th Queen Rhododendra?
P rincess Alex Saindon
P rincess Denielle Van Winkle
Sponsored by:
Sponsored by:
P rincess Andrea Sanchez
P rincess Th elma Gentry
P rincess Lainey Goss
Sponsored by:
You Asked For It!
Jazz Kings Top 20, 1996-2018
Sponsored by:
Siuslaw News
theshedd.org/JazzKings
Sunday, May 6, 2 pm matinee
Florence Events Center 541.997.1994
Be a part of a Florence Tradition.
Get your tickets today!
Sponsored by:
