In the past few months, maybe longer, we have heard about the looming cuts in County funds. I know that somethings will have to be cut, that is a given. However I think having police services is crucial. I would like to see no cuts in Police Services, Corretions, Youth Services and District Attorney's Office. I have elderly grandparents that live in Rural Lane County, and with all the home invasion robberies Lane County has had over the past few years I am concerned for their safety. I am even more concerned at the potential that there might not be any deputies to help them and others who live in the County. If deputies are able to arrest the criminal, most likely they will not have to pay for their crimes, and would be free to do it again to another person(s), or even go back and finish what they started.

I don't like to see any county positions going away. However, I think it is 110% critical that we have full time, around the clock patrol deputies. Also, a fully staffed District Attorney's Office to prosecute offenders and the adult and juvenile corrections space to house them. Lane County has a population of about 300 thousand people. About 100 thousand of these people live in rural areas the Sheriff's Office is responsible for patrolling. We simply can't afford to lose a third of the Sheriff's Department. 

The national average for law enforcement personnel per thousand members of population at one time was 2.5.  That being said, the Sheriff's Office is woefully understaffed at present and any additional loss would create an unacceptable risk to public safety. Criminals need to know that there are concenquences for their actions, and those consequences need to be enforced. I am sure that crimainals watch the news and pick up the Register Guard from time to time and after all the lay offs in the County, you had better believe that they will be out in force and crime rates will go up in the County.

Having a strong Sheriff's Office and District Attorney's Office is crucial to the safety of all citizens in Lane County.  Please if anyone has any ideas as to what we can do to Save the Sheriff's Office and District Attorney's Office speak up. My heart goes out to the citizens, that live in rural Lane County. If we are not able to keep our Police Protection, my advise to you is to always keep your windows and doors locked, and for you to invest in a good security system.

You're absolutely correct. Unfortunately, if every dollar in the general fund was applied to the Sheriff, DA and Juvenile corrections, it would still not be enough to bring Lane County anywhere near normal law enforcement staffing. In fact, it wouldn't even be enough to return patrol, and fully open the Serbu juvenile corrections facility and the Lane County jail -- and the jail is less than half the size it needs to be, as long as the county is going to be stuck managing 200 of the state prison inmates. The DA provided the corrections numbers earlier this week, using other counties around Oregon and the country as comparisons. The number are far worse than I imagined. Today our jail has one-tenth of the capacity of a normal jail for a jurisdiction of this size. When the 2008 cuts are implemented, it will be reduced to 27 local jail beds -- less than one-thirtieth of the capacity needed, and one-tenth the capacity of the little Douglas County jail (which serves a rural county with less than one third of Lane County's population.) All but one of the DA's eleven investigators have already been laid off, as have 8 of the 29 deputy DAs, with another four DAs set to be laid off in six weeks. The system deficit is far beyond correction through prioritization. The only fix is a normal tax base, and the public is unwilling to support that. They're going to wait to see how many people are raped and/or murdered, I'm afraid. One thing you can do is call or write the county commissioners and tell them that you expect to see law enforcement services funded to the extent possible. Have family and friends do the same. My fear is that the commissioners will cave in to the twenty citizens who show up to demand funding for the animal center and the extension service, both of which can be provided by others. Those services may be funded at the expense of law enforcement cuts. I just learned something else. Every time the county whacks the DA, including all four times since 2001, they're unable to prosecute more criminals. If they don't prosecute the criminals, the county doesn't get as much state corrections revenue. The last time the county cut a few lawyers they "saved" a few hundred thousand dollars in payroll and cost more than a million dollars in annual corrections revenue. Talk about STUPID... It's frustrating, but the commissioners cave in to public pressure every time, and nobody speaks for public safety.

Thank goodness there will finally; hopefully be less police, sinse police are the bad guys.  And arrest people for no reason at all most of the time, and put them in jail or prison for no reason, most of the time.  This is suppose to be a free country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm sure you're not trying to be serious, and you probably injected all the grammar, spelling and syntax errors just to to underscore the silliness, but what you said really is true in some countries around the world. There are countries in which innocent people are jailed without due process or even good cause . We have to remain vigilant to prevent that from happening here.

Our local crime problem has become so severe that most people are leaning towards extreme solutions. For example, the latest "tough on crime" measure being proposed by extreme-right-winger Kevin Mannix is estimated to cost $400,000,000 per biennium. It emphasizes only long minimum prison sentences for first-time offenders on drug and property crimes. That isn't the answer.

For less than half of the cost the money could be diverted to local jurisdictions where it could support a combination of prevention, police patrol, jail space and drug treatment, including in-patient drug treatment.

In the old days, when Oregon counties were solvent, first time car theives would be arrested and thrown in jail long enough to provide time to think and reflect. They'd get a lawyer and, if drugs are the problem, a chance to participat in drug treatment. Those who didn't wish to become career criminals could stop, change course, kick the drugs, and have their records expunged. These days, such a person is unlikely to encounter police on his first few crimes, and he's unlikely to be held in jail until he's been arrested five or seven times. By that time there is no chance for a wake-up call. A person with five or six car thefts faces a presumptive prison sentence, and a long one -- one that might have been avoided entirely if the system had the resources to intervene effectively early on. Lane County used to be on the other extreme, but now it sends a HIGHER percentage of offenders to prison, because there is no functional local jail for less extreme sentences. Oddly, by failing to fund local jail and treatment, we're actually creating larger PRISON numbers and, as a result, a whole new sub-class of career criminals. What else can a 23 year old do after serving five years for stealing six cars and doing two home burglaries? It's a shame and a waste. It's also darn expensive and irresponsible, but we're too cheap to prevent this on the front-end. We're LAST in the USA in police staffing per population, and our jail capacity is even worse. (What's the word for a jail that could be doubled in capacity and still be in last place in per-capita capacity for a community like this?)

Meanwhile, Joe-six-pack is darn pissed about the fact that his house has been burglarized and his truck has been stolen twice in thirteen months. In fact, Lane County ranked in the 98th percentile for car theft in 2006, and 95th percentile for residential burglary -- and, according to the Register Guard last week, it's still worse than any community in New York or New Jersey. That kind of persistent abuse of the community generates anger, and that anger translated into a 70% favorable polling on Kevin Mannix's latest crime sentencing bill described above. It seems likely to pass in November, so we'll all be paying for it. Ironically, Lane County residents will end up paying fully, but receiving little to know benefit, as most of the people eligible for those increased punishments either will not be charged here (because we've let most of the property crime DAs go) or they will not be tried here, because burglars, car thieves and the like don't get held in our jail. These days we're not even holding all the rapists and robbers.

Our justice system is the best in the world. It makes fewer mistakes, and is more just than the alternatives anywhere else. It's not perfect, and we do have to many people incarcerated, but remember, many of the crimes that produce long sentences in the USA produce sentences of DEATH in most of the world. In the middle east, possession of a gram of Heroin earns a sentence of death. Here, not even a sentence of death produces a death sentence: Oregon's death penalty was reinstated almost 25 years ago. Since then many have been sentenced to death, but not one has received the sentence without voluntarily waiving all right to further appeal. (Two have done that.)

Oregon ranks 30th of the 50 states in number per-capita prison incarceration rate, so we're in the 40th percentile, still well below every measure of average. We can lower that number at least 30%, if we become realistic about drug laws, deport illegal aliens who are convicted (instead of sending them to our prisons and then deporting them $200,000 later), and address local criminals proactively at the local level. THAT's why we need to fund local police, DAs, POs, jails, and treatment centers the way we used to in the late 70s.

The first budget hearing is tonight.   I believe it will be accessible via cable, but the budget message and a lot of other great information is located at the following link.   http://www.lanecounty.org/cao_budget/budget/FY0809ProposedBudget.htm

I watched the hearings from last night via the web-link. The nay-sayers should take a look.

It's much worse than Spanky said. Your jail has only about 90 county beds left in operation today, and two-thirds of those are set to be closed in six weeks when the rest of the layoffs are fully implemented. At thirty beds the county doesn't even have enough to hold all the murders and rapists.

According to the Sheriff, Lane County would need a total corrections capacity of approximately 1,600 beds to fully meet present need. Over 1,100 of those beds need to be in the jail.

The DA cited Douglas County as an example of a close Oregon jurisdiction with almost enough jail space at 287 beds to serve a population of 105,000. Lane County has over three times the Douglas population and less than one third of the jail capacity.

Your crime rate is getting famous too, as is your absence of law enforcement. Watch the full segment from the Sheriff, DA, Health and Human Services Director and the Director of the Juvenile division. It's terribly bad, and terribly dangerous.