I am completey outraged that Sarah Bridges was only given five years probation and required to take a sex offenders class for her crime of RAPING a 15 year old student.  Yes, I said rape.  That is what is called when an adult has sex with a minor, whether he wanted it or not.  She got probation because of jail overcrowding?  She RAPED a child!!!!  You can't tell me that this city can't afford to build a larger jail.   Do the people in charge think we are idiots???  I bet she would be in jail she RAPED one of their children IN THEIR HOME while they were on vacation.  If this had been a man RAPING a girl he would be in jail.  Worse yet, if it had been a black man or someone from the middle east, they would be dead.  Am I over reacting?  I don't think so.  I think it's time that we vote people into office who will actually do something about the crime in our city and not let criminals walk the street because "there is no room at the inn."

Jail overcrowding is reality.  No money to make "room at the inn" tranlates to criminals walking free.  This is not the fault of the people in office.  It is the fault of the taxpayer who refuses to pay for existing services and yet demands these services at the same time.  Common sense tells me that to lump all persons convicted of "rape" into one category is wrong.   Rape is an act of violence.  Was this young man violently attacked?   Sarah was wrong, but she does not belong in the same class as violent attackers.  

mewzikmajor

I image that, as part of a plea agreement, Bridges was given 5 years probation and 60 days in jail.  But she also has to register as a sex offender, no contact with minor (no more teaching kids) and provide DMA and a polygraft on demand.  You were right in saying that it was rape, statutory rape. In accordance with the FBI definition, statutory rape is characterized as non-forcible sex with a person who is younger than the statutory age of consent.  So you saying "whether he wanted to or not" doesn't apply here.  Appeartly, he wanted to at first. 

I don't think it is a matter of who we vote into office to do something about it.  The public servants we have there now would love to put everyone who do things like this in jail, lock 'em up and throw away the key.  We as voters say "why are we letting the criminals off with a slap on the wrist?".  The elected officials say, "you want us to put them away, here is the tax increase that we need to do so."  Or "here is the list of services that we need to cut to do so"  Voters response?  "Well, maybe 5 years probation is better than me paying more in taxes."   So what do we want, more jail beds = more taxes or probation, monitoring, do's and don'ts? 

'No room at the inn'?  So who do we keep in jail?  The violent criminals?  Would you rather keep the person convicted of manslaughter or statutory rape?  I think the punishment fits the crime.  She is one less person I have to pay to be locked up. 

 

n8

Jail overcrowding is a misnomer. Lane County now has less than one-fifteenth of the average jail capacity for a jurisdiction of this size and population. With a crime rate that is well above average in 5 of 6 categories, and in the worst 5% in the U.S. in residential burglary and car theft rates, we're in trouble.

According to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, the crime rate averages for the three largest metro areas in Oregon (taken together) actually dropped slightly last year... you have to read farther in their data to see that Eugene actually continued to get worse. It's a shame, but law enforcement has always been a low-low priority in Lane County.

All of the above has little to do with Ms. Bridges case. She got the lenient sentence she received because that's what Oregon law required. Neither the DA nor the judge had the discretion to send her to prison -- and yes, the sentence would have been the same if the offender had been a man. She was given the legal maximum number of jail days as a condition of her probation. (Measure 11, the citizen-response to the Oregon legislature's ridiculously lenient sentencing structure, would have kicked in and required a sentence of about 5.5 to 7.5 years if the victim had been two years younger.)

The county's ridiculous jail situation impacts this case only to the extent that it guarantees she'll serve very few days of her sentence. She got 60 days, but she apparently had no prior record, and the average Lane County criminal serves less than 10% of his sentence in jail, so she'll probably serve only 5 or 6 days before being bounced out to serve a few day on road crew. (According to the most recent report by the Sheriff, the average inmate will serve about 23% of his sentence WHEN ALL ALTERNATIVE SENTENCES ARE INCLUDED. "Alternatives" means stuff like road crew, ankle bracelets, and "day reporting", where the inmate is free to run around all day but has to stop by the jail once per day to check in. In the last year, many inmates in so-called day-reporting-custody have committed new crimes while "in custody." In one instance the guy robbed a bank while the county computer system showed he was "in the custody of the sheriff". Funny, but sad.

The jail numbers would be much worse, but the Sheriff is no longer investigating approximately 200 felony property crimes PER MONTH, because most of the general patrol staff is gone, and only two of the 18 detective positions from thirty years ago remain. (so that saves another 150 to 200 arrests every month.) The DA is in the same boat: he's lost 10 of the 11 investigators the office had back in the late 70s and early 80s. Of course, the population and crime rate have soared since.

The DA is also trying to limit pressure on the jail by reducing the number of warrant arrests he returns to Oregon so, when our car thieves and burglars are arrested in Nevada, Arizona, or wherever, he often leaves them there, because if he brings them back they'll just be immediately released from the jail to steal some more from Lane citizens. The judges are trying to help too, but there is little they can do, as their sentences are all but meaningless now. Lane County has literally thousands of felons it can't even get to trial -- forgers, burglars, drug dealers, car thieves, identity thieves, perverts (weenie-waggers), and so on -- because they can't hold them long enough to get to trial. Some offenders have been arrested more than a dozen times for the same offense!

It's a terrible state of affairs, but this is what Lane County residents want. Not all of us, of course, but a consistent majority. Lane County citizens have consistently voted to cut law enforcement of every kind... Thirty years ago Lane County had average per-capita law enforcement staffing across the board, and a crime rate that averaged in the lowest 25% to 30% in the USA. Since that time the population has inflated, the serious crime rate has more than doubled, and the staffing in some critical law enforcement agencies has been cut by 40% to 60%.

There are nine police agencies in Lane County. (Eugene, Springfield, Oregon State Police, Lane County Sheriff, Florence, Coburg, Cottage Grove, Junction City and Oakridge) If the number of sworn officers in every agency was DOUBLED, Lane County would be close to national average in per-capita police officer density. That's never going to happen. This year, after the sheriff lost another 90 positions*, he's almost lost general patrol and search and rescue entirely. Most of the patrol positions were converted to "traffic team" -- meaning they have to write tickets to survive, because the county can't pay for them anymore. That's a lousy way to do business, as it means the deputies have to keep writing tickets unless the 911 call involves immediate threat to life. So when my house is burglarized or my car is smashed in at the park, as it was last year, I'll get no police response. If the traffic deputies were sent to all of those low-risk calls, dozens and dozens per day, they wouldn't generate the revenue, they'd have to be laid off, and then NOBODY would be available to respond to the next shooting in Goshen or Elmira. (Yes, Lane County has plenty of rape, robbery, homicide. I remember there were four murders in the month of January alone, but I don't recall what the running total is for 2008. I do remember reading that the Eugene violent crime rate is up 15% from the year before.

Anyway, no sense complaining about any of this. It's been beat to death. We're in this situation, from no cops and DA's to lenient sentences to no jail beds and POs, because we chose to de-fund all of those services. Lane County has lost hundreds of employee positions over the last 30 years. In fact, Lane County has lost positions in 13 of the last 16 years, and they have heavily publicized every cut. Citizens don't care. As they say, we've made our beds and now we're getting to lie in them.

Here's a funny: I saw the DA speak on this subject earlier in the year. A member of the audience said, "Many citizens think it's like the story about the little boy who cried wolf." The DA responded (paraphrasing),

"Yes, but every time we cried wolf the wolf came and took a few sheep... We told you it would get worse and it has. Now the property crime problem is terrible and we can't get the cases to trial because we have no rural cops, no investigators, the rate of criminals failing to appear is approaching 40%, and our trial rate has dropped to below 2% - because we've lost 35% of our DAs while the county population and crime rate have increased sharply."

Here's the good news: The politicians have finally gotten the message on taxes. After twenty years of trying, and 10 or 12 failed attempts to raise a tax to support public safety, the politicians have finally given up. The DA said,

"They want us to make do -- even if we've only got half the staff and we're left with only 75 jail beds to serve an average demand for more than 1,200 beds. (Roseburg -- Douglas County -- is less than one third of our population, but their jail capacity is more than three times as large!) We're going to do the very best job with whatever we have left... But we get it -- the public would rather see us fly the public safety plane into the ground than provide [average] tax support, so we've stopped asking for it.."

That pretty well sums it up.

Several Oregon timber counties are considering bankruptcy and reabsorbtion into the county from which they were cleaved. (So, for example, Josephine, Curry and Coos Counties could cease to exist.)

We're going to get a bigger dog, because we can't afford to move.

* The sheriff lost another 90+ positions during this year's budget cuts, but many employees "self-selected" before they had to be laid off. Some took early retirement and many went to work for other police agencies in Oregon and around the region. Only 57 actually remained to be laid off by the deadline in the end of May.

mewzikmajor:

I am completey outraged that Sarah Bridges was only given five years probation .... Am I over reacting?  I don't think so.  I think it's time that we vote people into office who will actually do something about the crime in our city and not let criminals walk the street because "there is no room at the inn."

Mewzikmajor, I appreciate your outrage. In fact, I share it. But you're attributing authority to those who don't have it. It's our fellow citizens who are keeping criminals on the streets, not the Sheriff, Judge or DA. All they can do is enforce the laws they're given using the tools we give them.

We give them a small fraction of what they need, and less every year, because Lane County doesn't have the same tax rate as the other metro areas. (They average over $3 per $1,000 of assessed property value, while Lane is stuck at $1.28.)

The county commissioners who went out on a limb to improve this situation and fund public safety almost got recalled for their efforts. The citizens here really don't seem to care.

Lane County is a strange mix of radical right-wingers who will not support any tax for any purpose, and radical left-wingers who believe we have too many cops even when we're the lowest staffed jurisdiction in the USA and crime is terrible. Heck, they think we STILL have too many jail beds, because they confuse prison with jail and the don't have any idea how many beds we have or what we need. They're 100% driven by world-view (as opposed to data), so they're on the same page every time, regardless of how the variables have changed.

These radical groups, both large here, invariably join in perpetuating anti-law-enforcement urban myths and killing any efforts to fund public safety. None of these people (and few citizens) can be bothered to look at the facts and make reasoned comparisons and choices. It's much easier to accuse public servants, mumble something about bad priorities, and turn the channel.

The journeyman experts in the various fields all agree with each other (mental health, DA, treatment providers, Sheriff, juvenile counselors) -- but it doesn't matter to the crazies.

The facts (data) tell most f the story. As of 2004, Lane County had the lowest per-capita police staffing in the entire USA. Lower than rural Maine, Vermont, North Dakota, or any of the other rural places which have little to no crime. Last. Since then there have been more severe cuts, though Lane County may now be better off than Coos, Josephine or Curry counties, the other Oregon timber counties taking a bad beating.

The bottom line is this: The only way this gets turned around is if we overcome public apathy and ignorance, as it will take a strong, united majority to overcome the unlikely alliance of political crazies described above. Many have tried. For more detailed information, including copies of reports over the years, I encourage you to write the DA, Sheriff, as they have county-wide data for many years. It paints a grim picture that's getting much worse.

You may just thank the lazy cheap-ass tax payers of Lane County.
And for the City's problems..thank Kitty for wasting hundreds and hundreds  of thousands of dollars on real estate and hiking trails while the EPD do not have enough units to cover our city.

If you think it's bad now, just wait until Faye Stewart and/or Bobby Green, the only surviving moderates on the county commission, is replaced by another hard-left idealogue who can't be bothered to show up for work. The last one, Pete, is reportedly lobbying hard for another under-employed, underperforming nincompoop.

Just imagine... Pete, new guy, Dwyer, new guy, and BettMAN as the new commission!

They'd immediately create a new oversight-oversight committee, have some public punishment of a few innocent cops, and form a new million dollar county commission on unremarkable issues. The commission will have no purpose other than to create a focus group to select members of a task force to evaluate the next 623 human rights issues that need to be addressed in Tibet and your sister city in Bangladesh. Of course, the only way to fund that will be to get rid of the remaining few beds at the jail, eliminate Parole and Probation officers, and fire all the DAs and cops. It will be all the quintessential Eugene resident could hope for!

As previous posters have pointed out, this problem is related to lack of funding.  The biggest issue with this is the negative publicity that a few police officers have garnered for the Eugene Police Department.  I have encountered excellent, professional police officers in Eugene and I have encountered the opposite.  The problem is that the only ones getting publicity are the few officers who act inappropriately (sex abuse case a few years ago, tazer incident more recently).  That is why Lane County residents are reluctant to provide more funding.  They don't want their money going into the paycheck of an officer who is going to abuse his or her priviledge.  Unfortunately, MOST of the officers on the force are not like this, but you'd never know that from watching the news or reading the paper. 

I understand that the Eugene Police failed the two cops (Lara and Magana) during the background investigation process and declined to hire them, but the city Human Resources Department forced the PD to hire them in order to meet diversity objectives.

In any event, those two cops were convicted and sent to prison five or six years ago and, as you say, they represent a small fraction of the force. I don't understand why the citizens of Eugene continue to define that agency by the worst two employees the agency ever had.

As for the most recent allegation concerning tazers, it sounds like there might not be any police misconduct. Although several of the activists are saying the tazer was unnecessary, other bystanders and business owners said the police acted with exceptional restraint. The one guy who has video of the whole incident from beginning to end has decided not to share the whole tape. Given his anti-police views, I assume that means there was no misconduct, as I can't imagine him hiding video to HELP police.

I think the local anti-police bias has been part of the Eugene culture since the 60s. According to that report that was linked in the old public safety tax threads, Lane County made it to last-in-USA staffing in police, jail capacity (and DA?) long before Lara and Magana, back when the economy was strong and federal support for counties was in place. Even during the Clinton years when the "COPS" grant put 100,000 new police officers on the streets across the country, the countywide public safety staffing per population was something like HALF the national average and our crime rates were already very bad. I don't get it. I'm progressive, and I favor education, but even I recognize the need for adequate policing, prosecution and jail capacity. Those services are part of essential infrastructure, just like bridges, government buildings and schools. Speaking of government buildings, check out the Lane County Courthouse if you get a chance. I saw it last week. The place is an unbelievable DUMP! Floor tiles missing, old dilapidated elevators that squeak and bang, chipping paint, stained ceiling tiles, broken or cracked window parts in the bathroom, stained carpeting in the courtroom, and cobwebs all around the place. (We did a fair amount of just sitting in court.) To get into the building we had to go around to the basement level, because the county can only afford to operate building security at the main entrance a few hours per week. We asked why they didn’t leave the main entrance open and close the basement. They said they have to keep the basement open because it has the only adequate wheelchair access! The rest of the building long=predates the accessibility laws and the county can’t afford to retrofit! The Lane County Courthouse is one of the worst government buildings I’ve ever seen in this country. It’s an embarrassment. We would NEVER allow a local school building to remain in that level of disrepair... It would be torn down and replaced.)