January 13, 2004

Crime in Eugene, OR

From Stefan Sharkansky's blog comes a link to this story in the Corvallis Gazette-Times: bq. Lane County residents who report burglaries, car thefts, identity theft, vandalism or other property crimes have a very slim chance of ever seeing an arrest in their cases. bq. The sheriff's office has eliminated both its positions dedicated to investigating property crime after one detective left to be a civilian volunteer in Bosnia to train police there. bq. There's no money for hiring a replacement for Detective Tim Roos, police services Capt. Bret Freeman said, and there may be even less money in the future if county officials go ahead with $4.6 million in planned cuts in the coming year. bq. "It's not that we don't want to help people," Freeman said. "It's that we cannot help people." bq. Victims are lucky if a deputy even shows up to take a report these days. Instead, they're often instructed to download a report form from the county's Web site and mail it in, or they can request a form be mailed to them, Freeman said. bq. Patrol deputies who have time between emergency calls try to follow up as much as they can, but with an average of two deputies and one sergeant patrolling 4,618 square miles of unincorporated land, there's not a lot of opportunity for investigation, the captain said. This sort of thing is happening all the time - people demanding tax cuts but not realizing that with less revenue, the various public services are not going to be able to provide the same level of support... We get this a lot in Seattle with local (actually, he lives in a different city entirely) tax hero Tim Eyeman. Granted, there is a lot of overhead and inefficiency in a lot of the governmental offices but still, to cut basic services as these is abysmal. Posted by DaveH at January 13, 2004 1:07 PM