A murder, a drive-by shooting, an attempted murder, and THREE situations in which police have had to shoot bad-guys in just two weeks. (It wasn't covered on KMTR, but the last police-involved shooting was Saturday night/Sunday morning.)

I can't remember that much shooting here since.... Oh, yeah, we had more in January. Never mind.

A day without gunfire is like a day without sunshine.

Darn good thing SPD and LCSO shoot people and don't Taser them like EPD or their cops would be in BIG trouble. I'll never move out of Springfield where lowlife crooks risk getting shot by the cops when they are breaking the law. Run from the cops in Springfield and it equals a trip to the hospital.  Smart off in Springfield and get ready to be lit up with a Taser. Fight with SPD and you'll probably get shot. In Eugene you can tell a cop downtown to kiss your 1st amendment sporting ass, and they, the EPD cops, have to think about what the Auditor, Kitty, Andrea, and the Civillian Review board will say as they Monday morning QB from their cushy office. Attention all crooks - free for all in Eugene: the new Mid Willamette Ghetto.

Spanky:

A murder, a drive-by shooting, an attempted murder, and THREE situations in which police have had to shoot bad-guys in just two weeks. (It wasn't covered on KMTR, but the last police-involved shooting was Saturday night/Sunday morning.) I can't remember that much shooting here since.... Oh, yeah, we had more in January. Never mind.

Haven't you figured out that KMTR covers almost NOTHING regarding Eugene and Springfield? "Smiley and his side kick are more into the nation news that can be seen 1/2 to an hour later instead of reporting what's in their own back yard. If I want to know about the stock market and hurricanes, I'll wait 1/2 hour and get it on the other station. And dont waste your time sending them emails.............

---

I belong to PETA...People Eating Tasty Animals

Anybody keeping score? Yep, we've had another FOUR homicides, FIVE police-involved shootings and a boat-load of bank robberies and home invasions in just the last two months.

Thank goodness we don't have a crime problem... That would be scary.

At least we still have the right to own guns...  Oh, I forgot, you might get prosecuted for a measure 11 for defending your home...

In the famous words of Val Kilmer in "Tombstone," Very cosmopolitan."

kickstart:

...  Oh, I forgot, you might get prosecuted for a measure 11 for defending your home...

Ha! You're funny!

But according to the Sheriff, and the Circuit Court, the Lane County jail is regularly releasing Measure 11 felons, so you don't have much to worry about :-)

It's funny, really. Your citizens have decided that the best way to manage all of this is to get rid of all the cops and close the jail. The result is higher crime, but even if the crime rate was three or four times as bad, much worse than the worst area of LA, MOST people would STILL not become crime victims in a given year, so the non-victims would still outnumber the victims each year. Lane County residents are ready for that, and no amount of murder, theft, and gang activity will make any difference, "as long as it doesn't happen to people like me." Odd, but that's where that community is. It's a shame so many good people are getting hurt, but that's the course the community has chosen.

It ought to be an interesting social experiment for a few more years, as Lane County made it to LAST place in the USA back in 2004. Since then it's continued to collapse, so you should be 20% or 30% below last. We're all curious to see what happens when there are literally NO cops in the rural areas. At least you'll be able to speed :-)

Halo:

Ha! You're funny! But according to the Sheriff, and the Circuit Court, the Lane County jail is regularly releasing Measure 11 felons, so you don't have much to worry about :-) It's funny, really. Your citizens have decided that the best way to manage all of this is to get rid of all the cops and close the jail. The result is higher crime

You are even more funny here with your ridiculous assertions.   None of these recent crimes that were mentioned were caused or influenced in any way at all by either how the Sheriff's office is being operated, or the County Jail either.   They would have happened no matter what.  

For you to say that they are the result of the county budget problems is absolutely absurd. 

You certainly are becoming desperate in making such wild and so obviously totally false claims.

.

Actually, Mr. Spring, according to the presiding judge and the paper, many of the recent crimes, including two of the recent homicides, were committed by people who were released prematurely from the Lane County jail. (For a specific example, that Wesley guy is charged with a recent murder, and he's the one who was shot a few weeks back when he tried to kill the Springfield cop by running him over.)

Even those of us who don't favor tax increases recognize that there are crime consequences for failure to fund a normal jail. Frankly, I haven't heard any other explanation for the terrible local crime rate or the fact that crime is getting worse here while the crime rate is declining in Salem and Portland. Even the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission says that the situation in Lane County is getting worse while other areas of the state have been improving.

According to the DA and the local judges, the Douglas County jail has more than three times the capacity of our jail, but their county is more rural and has less than one third of our population. From where I sit I can't see any reason to expect why this area should be able to function properly with less than 1/9th of the jail space per population when we have a higher population density and a higher crime rate.

If you have data that runs contrary to what the paper, the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, the Judges, the Sheriff, the State Attorney General and the local DA have shown, I'd sure like to see it. (You might want to watch the hearing that is linked in that other neighboring thread.)

horsey:

Actually, Mr. Spring, according to the presiding judge and the paper, many of the recent crimes, including two of the recent homicides, were committed by people who were released prematurely from the Lane County jail. (For a specific example, that Wesley guy is charged with a recent murder, and he's the one who was shot a few weeks back when he tried to kill the Springfield cop by running him over.)

Even those of us who don't favor tax increases recognize that there are crime consequences for failure to fund a normal jail. Frankly, I haven't heard any other explanation for the terrible local crime rate or the fact that crime is getting worse here while the crime rate is declining in Salem and Portland. Even the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission says that the situation in Lane County is getting worse while other areas of the state have been improving. According to the DA and the local judges, the Douglas County jail has more than three times the capacity of our jail, but their county is more rural and has less than one third of our population. From where I sit I can't see any reason to expect why this area should be able to function properly with less than 1/9th of the jail space per population when we have a higher population density and a higher crime rate. If you have data that runs contrary to what the paper, the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, the Judges, the Sheriff, the State Attorney General and the local DA have shown, I'd sure like to see it. (You might want to watch the hearing that is linked in that other neighboring thread.)

Utter nonsense.   You have provided no real data or specifics here.   What specific news stories from what newspapers are you referring to?   Why can't you provide any references at all?   And which specific judges are you referring to?   What are their names?  What exactly did they specifically say?

I know that our DA's office has engaged in using scare tactics in the past ( they did a lot of that during the County Income Tax debate ), and you clearly are also doing so here with your totally false allegations that you cannot back up with any real evidence.

Please give the exact specifics of one other one of these recent crimes that would have been prevented.   Explain exactly how and why the crime would have been prevented.

The one example you did give of Wesley was way back in the beginning of September.   His case has nothing at all to do with this more recent spate of crime that has taken place and which the news media has been talking about so much.   Which of these crimes that have received attention in the media in recent weeks would have been prevented in any way at all??   I bet you that all of them would have taken place, no matter what.  To argue that county budget issues are driving an increase in crime is nothing more than a pure and simple scare tactic,

And if I recall correctly, all Wesley and also the second murder suspect in that case, Ronald Smith, were awaiting trial on was car theft.   That is hardly considered to be a violent crime.  Many counties in many states don't hold people for trial for mere car theft.  That is hardly anything extraordinary, as you are trying to misrepresent it to be.

I have no opposition at all to the county jailing more individuals.   But government needs to start coming up with solutions other than to add yet more new taxes onto the shoulders of the working class in Oregon.   Let them instead tax businesses, just like Multnomah County currently does.  Even Multnomah, which many consider to be the most liberal county in Oregon, does not have an income tax on individuals.  Or let them increase taxes on people with high incomes, like Obama is planning to do.   But don't tax the middle class anymore, when we are in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with absolutely no end in sight to it on the horizon.

The middle class has had it with a never ending procession of new taxes being shoveled ontop of them by politicians who are too lazy to find any other solutions to problems other than to simply tax and tax and tax even more.

Any politicians that support taxing the middle class further with new additional taxes need to suffer the same fate as Bobby Green.

Lance

At the risk of feeding a troll, I'll bite...

Mr. Spring, I have to assume this is all unknown to you because you're not reading the newspaper (the only one we have here), watching the news, or watching the county hearings that have been linked and discussed in other recent threads on this site. To help you along, the paper is "The Register Guard", the DA is Alex Gardner, the Sheriff is Russ Burger, the Springfield Police Chief is Jerry Smith, and the Presiding Oregon Circuit Court Judge for Lane County is MaryAnne Bearden. They all testified at the recent hearing that the other participants in the thread watched via the posted link. The Chief Criminal Judge is Deb Voat. She was introduced, but did not get a chance to speak because of the lengthy filibuster by Commissioner Fleenor.

I could try to summarize the hours of videotaped hearings we have watched, but my summary would be a poor substitute for the real thing. Why don't you just watch the hearings yourself? If you're a taxpayer, and not just trolling here, I think you'll be as outraged as everybody else is. You'll see the guy you bad-mouth (Green) is trying to learn something, while Fleenor and Sorenson try to prevent the hearing from happening, and then, when they can't stop it, they talk through it. (They ask about national policy and a dozen other things that have nothing to do with the purpose of the hearing, so the time will be sued up before the people they invited can speak.)

You can tell the people testifying are being sincere when they talk of the problems they're having. (Again, to help you out, I'm talking about the recent Lane County, Oregon hearing on public safety, all videotaped, archived and available on the Lane County website and linked on a neighboring thread here.) Some of the same information was presented during the Sheriff's Harris Hall budget presentations for this year, also linked on the county website.

You call them "scare tactics"? Based on what? You're the first person to suggest the information presented is not true and there is no problem, and I've yet to find anybody who can point me to data supporting your view. Frankly, everything I can find makes the situation seem WORSE than the DA and sheriff suggested and, so far, exactly what they forecasted has come true. Crime IS up and criminals ARE just failing to come to court.

Mere car theft? Car theft is a felony, and in most jurisdictions around the USA, people have to post bond/bail/security in order to be released on a felony, especially if they have a record like Mr. Wesley. Forgive me if I defer to the senior judge's appraisal of our circumstance instead of yours. She's NOT a county employee, and she described the situation as terribly dire.

You're a lay-citizen, like me, shooting from the hip about what you assume would have happened anyway. Is there any chance the professionals know something about this and are telling the truth? Why assume there is no consequence for having a jail one-tenth the normal size? Back in 2005 the DA said the gang problem was increasing because the jail was closed, he lost rural patrol, the narcotics team was eliminated, and he has no detectives available to work the increasing gang crime. He recently described an intercepted communication in which a gang-drug-dealer in LA spoke of the Lane County jail being inadequate to hold his dealer. He predicted this three and four years ago, as did the sheriff. Aren't you wondering why Lane County crime numbers are not behaving like the rest of the state and the nation? Why is that? Why should sleepy little Eugene have a car theft rate in the 98th percentile in the USA and a burglary rate in the 95th percentile? Why is our crime problem increasing while that of Portland and Salem is decreasing? Why would our jurisdiction have so much more homicide then Salem, when Salem used to be worse? Could it POSSIBLY be related to getting rid of cops, POs, DAs and jail space? You think maybe it's the weather instead?

I requested and received a copy of the DA's 2004 report entitled "Summary of Lane County Public Safety Collapse". All of the numbers in that report were based on authorities the DA cited, so I looked them up. Why don't you do the same? Lane County compares very poorly with other jurisdictions in Oregon and terribly with most jurisdictions across the country. Our crime rate is climbing, while other areas in Oregon and the rest of the country are getting better. Our officer-staffing by population is less than HALF the national average, and our DA's office has less than 60% of the staff it had in the 1970s when the crime rate was a small fraction of what it is today. Our jail capacity is now less than 10% of average, and the rate of robbery and violence is increasing rapidly. That's scary, for me, but it isn't "tactics".

The sheriff transferred some money saved by closing the forest work camp to the jail. The work camp was reportedly less expensive per bed, but he couldn't operate it anymore. The money he saved allowed him to increase the downtown jail capacity from 93 to about 130 beds available for local criminals, so now he's got almost half the capacity of the Douglas County jail. (But Douglas County has a lower crime rate and less than one-THIRD of our population!) Lane County would have to have seven or eight times it's present local jail capacity just to be even with Douglas on a per-population basis, and the Douglas jail is hurting for capacity too. (Another timber county.) Again, Mr. Spring, you're the first to suggest Lane County is really fine, and I can't figure out how it possibly COULD be fine with such terrible staffing and capacity levels.

Doubt the math? (Google the county population for each county, as I did).

If you want the source documents, and you don't want to read the Register Guard or watch the television, call the DA's office and make a request as I did. I had questions and the DA spent a few minutes explaining the answers to me. Why not try that? It's only "scare tactics" if the information being shared is not true. He gave me the links to the FBI data and emailed me state by state numbers for state patrol staffing too. All of this stuff is public record. If you have sources that are more reliable than the budget-staffing documents and the FBI summaries, and you think the state judges are in on some big deception effort, why not show the rest of us your secret and blow the lid off of this scandal?

As I've said before, I'm not a tax advocate. I'm a contractor, I'm tired of being hosed on taxes. I voted against the county income tax because I was pissed and I'm tired of being taxed for programs that don't benefit me or my family. I also bought into the whole "the county has plenty of money" idea. Now I know better. I was ignorant -- on that point anyway. HOWEVER, I still stand by the belief that the GOVERNMENT has plenty of money if they're not pissing it away on a million unnecessary services that didn't exist when I was a kid. As it turns out, that money is in possession of the city and the state, not the county. From where I sit, that means the state and city ought to give up some of my massive tax check so the county can provide law enforcement services. That's the solution, not taxing me more.

As an alternative, I would support a sales tax everybody had to pay IF income tax and property tax were rolled back. I like the idea of the illegals paying SOME tax, and they're not paying any of the other two biggies that cripple me every year.

As long as I live here I expect to have law enforcement services protecting me and my family, and I think it's TERRIBLE that all of the county law enforcement programs have been cut back below 1960s levels. Heck the county staffing dream that would have been funded under the income tax proposal was STILL less than the staffing they had in the 1970s! I has HERE in the 70s, and I didn't have to worry about our building sites being robbed and stripped twice before we could even get the house secured. I didn't have to worry about my car being stolen out of my driveway either, and we didn't have six or seven bank robberies in a week. If you think we don't have a crime problem, you're smoking crack! Ditto if you think the county doesn't have a law enforcement resource problem. (The last house we had stripped was out near Veneta, so it was the Sheriff's jurisdiction. I got a first hand look at what they've got left downtown. Mostly the detectives division is a bunch of empty offices -- and the same is true of the DA who is down to only one detective from the 11 or 12 he had in 1980.)

Instead of trolling here, Mr. Spring, why not take a spin down to the county and ask to speak with the DA or the sheriff. Ask for the documents. Ask for proof. Request a tour. Take a look for yourself. They you can come back and tell us how there's no crime problem and they've got plenty of staff. If you're the least bit sincere you'll change your tune and start trying to figure out how to get some of our tax money back from the state.

By the way, the state police has been hosed too. They're well below HALF of the 1980 staffing level when Oregon was right at average number of troopers per population. We've got PLENTY of state welfare workers, and plenty of welfare. Just the RAISE that state education got just last year would have been enough to bring the state police AND sheriffs AND DA's AND local jails up to average in the USA.

It's discouraging, especially now that I understand it. It was a lot easier when I thought the county had all the money they needed, because I'm darn sure the city and the state are never going to give up any of my tax money to support county services. With the tax increase Obama has planned for us working folks, we'll be paying several times more income tax than the county proposed and getting NOTHING for it. The news just keeps getting worse. (Not that McCain would have been better...)

Since you want to engage in childish name-calling and insult me by calling me a Troll, I'll return your personal insult right back at you Mister ( assuming that you are a man ) and refer to you as "Horse-Faced" from now on.   At least I sign my messages here with my real life name, unlike you, and the rest of the Chicken Little, the crime sky is falling on us crowd.  You could have actually been civil to me by addressing me as Lance, instead of calling me a troll.   But no, like a spoiled little brat, you like to insult those who disagree with you by engaging in name calling.  That's fine with me, as I can treat you just as rudely as you have spoken to me.

Dear Horse-Faced:

For your information, I live right here in Springfield, and just wrote a huge check for my property taxes.   You know what sort of home I live in?   An extremely modest house, barely over 1,000 sq ft in size, on a rather tiny lot.  It is not even a completely stand alone house either, as my garage is attached to my neighbor's garage.   My home is extremely basic in features and quality in every respect. Nothing special at all.   Yet, I just had to write a check for $2,202.47 and mail it to the County Tax Collector.

Do you know how shocked my family and friends that live in other states are, when they hear that I'm paying so very much in property taxes on such a modest little home?   They can't believe it.

So for your information, I pay PLENTY OF MONEY to keep the citizens of Springfield safe.  I paid $609.93 of that money to the city, with another $51.92 for the Springfield City Fire Local Option, and another $141.48 for the new Springfield Police Local Option.   The addition of that new Springfield Police Local Option, by the way, was what primarily made my property tax bill rise a whopping  10.5% this year!!  That is a dramatically huge increase.

On top of that, I also paid yet another $256.17 in other Springfield City Bonds.   So I give a lot to our local city government to keep the citizens of Springfield safe.   You want me to pay for more Sheriff Deputies to protect folks out in the county, when I'm already paying so much money to keep my own city safe?   Well, why don't you and all the other folks who live outside Springfield and Eugene start to pony up, and begin to pay to keep your areas safe, as the citizens of Springfield and Eugene already are doing?  Its time for rural residents to start paying their own way for their protection.

As far as the DA goes, he lost all credibility and respect from me when he retired for several months after his last re-election in 2004, and took a long extended vacation, all at the taxpayer's expense.   Why didn't he come forward before the election, and admit that he was burned out and could not continue to work?   Why did he have to wait until after the vote was over?   Why didn't he just be upfront and honest about how bad his personal condition was back then?

For him to have taken a half year off, and collected his lucrative pension ( all paid for by the taxpayers ) for all of that time, and then to come back out of retirement, to start his current term that is now about to end, was absolutely scandalous in my opinion.   I've not been able to document any other case ANYWHERE of another public official abusing the taxpayers like that before.   If he was so burned out and exhausted then, he should have simply not run for re-election, and retired 4 years ago.

As far as Obama raising personal income taxes, he is only going to do that to families making over $250,000 in income.   If you are that rich a contractor that you are making that kind of money, then you can easily afford to pony up and start paying more in taxes.   Most folks would give anything to be in your shoes, and making that sort of money.  Someone making that much money is not really a member of the middle class, in my opinion.   Obama has also promised to close over $1 Trillion in Corporate Tax loopholes, and start making Corporations pay more of their fair share also.

I am most hopeful that Fleenor, Handy, and Sorenson will consider tax plans just like Obama's.   Put in a County Income Tax on Businesses, just like Multnomah County has.   And put an income tax on the rich that live in Lane County too.   If you are an individual making over $125,000, or a family making over $250,000, then you can easily afford to pay higher taxes.

But don't put any more taxes on those of us making far less than that.

What we need are MORE people like Obama in office ( such as Handy), and not folks like our idiotic Governor, who now says that he wants to raise our vehicle registration fees by 300%. next year.  The middle class in Oregon has had it with higher taxes.   There are lots of folks who share my feelings.   And all the scare tactics in the world are not going to make us support higher taxes for the middle class.   I feel quite safe living here in Springfield.

The simple fact of the matter is this:  With our economy in absolute free-fall right now, and with no end of any kind in sight for this economic crisis, people will never vote for higher taxes for Middle Class folks.   The Middle Class is already being hit far too hard right now, from every possible direction.

.

I think you guys are mixing apples and oranges.

First, I agree with those who say our property taxes are too high. My brother lives outside Oregon and his house is worth almost twice mine, but he pays less property tax. Many point out that our overall taxes are much lower than most Americans, so I checked that out. When I used Google to check the phrase "overall tax load by state" I found Oregon ranked 30th of 50 states, but that rate is weighted by the huge Portland population which pays higher taxes than we do down here, even in Eugene, so those of us who don't live near Portland actually pay less than the taxpayers in 33 or 34 of the 50 states. That explains why our government services are in such poor shape when compared with states like California where the civil servants are paid much more AND get much better retirement. (Now that Oregon killed the old fat PERS program.)

The difference, as somebody else already said, is that we pay our taxes in two HUGE checks. The massive property tax bills which arrive right near election time, and the huge income tax bills we get in the spring. States that have sales tax get a little bite out of every transaction, a much less painful way to pay taxes. I'd much rather pay another 22 cents for my happy meal than get a whopping $2,700 property tax bill at the end of the year. Yes, sales tax can be "regressive", but there are plenty of responsible ways to manage that, like exemptions for medication and home-cooked food, and earned income tax credits for people who earn less money. There are fair ways to do it, and a sales tax collects from tourists and all the fraud and tax-dodging people, including all the illegal aliens who file no tax returns at all. I would support a sales tax IF there was a reduction in private property tax (as opposed to corporate property tax) and personal income tax.

Mr. Spring raises another interesting idea -- the idea that rural residents should pay more for Sheriff deputies. The idea makes some sense to me. Maybe there should be a split-tax-rate for the rural areas? The problem is the city residents tend to be the ones getting lost in the woods (search and rescue) and crashing cars on rural highways (not because they're poor hunters or drivers, but because they outnumber the rural residents.) Think about it. When the highway to Bend clogs up on winter Fridays it's not because of all the Oakridge residents, it's the people from Eugene and Springfield going skiing, hunting, etc.) The city folks are being victimized in the country too. Like others on this board, although I live inside the city, I've been victimized while visiting the country, including two car-smashings, one at the coast and the other at a boat ramp on the Mckenzie. My mom's car was smashed at Whitaker Creek last August and she didn't even have anything in her old beater of a car! They smashed in her window and there wasn't even anything worth stealing. Those were just thefts from our cars. I can't imagine how we'd feel if we were robbed, beaten or worse. (I saw the KVAL report on the guy who was assaulted in Home Depot. It said there had been 90 assaults in the Eugene area THAT WEEK!) I think we expect to have adequate enforcement protection whether we're in the city where we live, or outside the city where many of us recreate.

As to the DA, I think Mr. Spring has some facts wrong. First, Harkelrod was the one who retired for 6 months, not Gardiner, and Gardiner is the one who testified at the hearing. (I was offended by the Harkelrod thing too, so I called and asked. He didn't get double-paid or receive any other special benefit. He just gave up his salary and got his retirement checks (his money anyway) for a few months. The retirement money was cut off when he returned to work, so he didn't get double-paid and the taxpayers didn't pay any extra cost. Irregardless, the DA who testified at the hearing was Gardiner, the one the Governor appointed to do Harkelrods work while he was gone. Gardiner was elected last year to replace Harkelrod, though that doesn't matter for this point. The crime numbers are what they are. Nobody is saying the numbers provided by the DA are incorrect. In fact, most of the numbers came from the judge anyway, right? Irregardless, I think everybody agrees we have a bad crime problem and it is getting much worse. Even the media is reporting on the constant crime, robberies, murders and so on. The question is how to fix a very old problem that is getting worse.

Springfield residents ponied up to fix their own jail problem because the rest of the county, mostly south Eugene, refuses to help fix the county jail, and we're not going to do it for them. Springfield residents were tired of our criminals being released from the county jail again and again. If the rest of the county residents had carried their weight and helped rebuild the county jail, us Springfield residents wouldn't have had to build ours. Now we're paying a bunch more than everybody else, but at least we actually have cops and a jail!

The part I didn't realize when I voted to support our jail is that Springfield can't hold felonies, so the guy who steals a $300 bike can be held in Springfield jail, but the guy who steals a $30,000 car must be delivered to the county jail where he will be immediately released to go steal another one. How crazy is that?

The other thing I didn't think about is the county DA handles all the felonies in Springfield, the county POs manage all Springfield's felony criminals, and the county juvenile jail is the only place to lock up the young gangbangers and other criminal kids under 18 years old. No matter how bad or how violent, a 17 year old can't be held in our jail, and a murder in Springfield ALWAYS has to be handled by the DA, so our jail and police is only part of the solution. Our cops are great, but we’re still getting a bunch of robberies and sex crimes and murders and officer-shootings. We need the rest of the system we need to work properly — and I’m feeling pretty tapped out.

Here's my idea: Why not have a county tax proposal that pays Springfield residents for the jail we built? Then the county can run it as part of a bigger sheriff jail system, and it can hold felonies like bank robbers and rapists that are getting bounced out of the mini-jail over at the county? That would take care of part of the problem and give Springfield residents credit for what we've already paid or are paying! As I understand, the DA has lost 10 or 15 DAs over the last twenty years and about the same number of investigators. Even if we adjust upwards for the increased population it can’t be more than 20 Das and 20 investigators and some secretaries. I’m sure that would be expensive, but DA’s don’t get paid like regular lawyers. It MUST be a lot less expensive that the billion dollar jail we’re building. Same with all the probation officers. How many more does the county need to be staffed at average levels? 20? 30? Whatever — still less cost than our jail. We’re paying our share in Springfield. If the rest of the county residents contributed at the same rate the problem would be solved and we could start cleaning this place up. I don’t like paying so much in taxes, but it’s still a bargain if we’re paying less than the rest of America IF we’re safe and getting decent services.

Also, when our jail is fully built, all the criminals will learn that it doesn't pay to do crime in Springfield, and they'll be moving across the bridge to Eugene where they can get away with anything. That's going to be awful for Eugene residents. If they don’t like my idea today maybe they’ll like it better after a few more years of increasingly terrible crime.

I know Eugene pretty much hates cops, good or bad, so they get no credit no matter what they do, but we feel differently in Springfield and I think they feel differently in Florence, Junction City and many other areas around the county. We mostly like our cops and are grateful for the work they do. We shouldn’t let south Eugene hold the rest of the county hostage to their kooky ideas. Maybe the county should try a tax just for jail, cops, DA's and probation officers ONLY, with the special credit for Springfield folks who are currently doing more than their share! Even if all it did was open the existing county jail and the new Springfield “annex-jail” it would be a good step in the right direction.

Last point: I WANT to pay for the DAs and DA-investigator-detectives so they have the professionals they need to investigate the homicide, bank robbery, rape and so on. I think we have generally good people over there. BUT, I don't need any more traffic cops writing people tickets for no seatbelt. That's ridiculous! It seems like the only county cops I ever see are the motorcycle cops writing tickets on Hwy 99 and at U of O football games. Who cares? If that's the only way the county can pay for cops, then get rid of them and maybe the public will agree to help with the actual cop-work we need done! Anyway, I'd support law enforcement if we had a fair way to do it and we could focus our limited resources on the stuff that matters, like violent crime and property crime. I really don't care about the idiot who is growing three marijuana plants in his back yard.

Wow, lots of activity here!

Danielle, you make some great points. I have heard the Sheriff speak several times, and he always takes heat for the traffic team deputies. It seems like nobody like that program. The Sheriff said he'd prefer not to have enforcement hooked to revenue production, but he believes he HAS to keep the traffic program because those deputies were the ONLY response to 70% of his "priority one" calls last year (calls involving violence and risk to life). Apparently his deputies are instructed to drive around writing tickets to pay their overhead, and they can't divert from doing that unless there is a call which represents risk to life (not just property). That's why there is no deputy response when your Mom calls about her broken car window. Because most of the Sheriff patrol has been eliminated over the last thirty years, and the State Police has been slashed over the last 30 years too, the traffic deputies are often the only police outside city limits. If the traffic team is eliminated there will be nobody to respond to life-threatening emergencies at all -- a real problem given all the rape and kidnapping the sheriff has been investigating for the last couple years. I assume the traffic guys are getting stuck with lots of those investigations too, as the sheriff is down to only two detectives TOTAL (from twenty-something in the 1970s.) On one of those long budget hearing tapes DA Gardiner told the commissioners about having to call in the weigh-master to help stop traffic from driving through a murder scene just south of Eugene. Even emptying the downtown sheriff's office only gave the sheriff a total of three or four deputies and a trooper, and that wasn't enough to work the large crime scene or stop people from driving through it, so the weigh-master vans were called in to block the road. At least they looked like police vehicles and filled up most of the road. I guess we're a far cry from the "CSI" you see in Washington, Nevada and California. If you listen to Halo, it's because our citizens want lousy law enforcement staffing. That may be true in South Eugene, but there are plenty of normal people here who care about the safety of their families and their property. They're just normal folks worried about the stuff going on in their own lives. They're not focused on this stuff until they're ripped off or hurt. Frankly, I was in that category until we were victimized, and even after we were victimized. I've learned about this stuff mostly because I became more curious after we were hurt and I can access the information via the web in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.

There is no real debate about the crime problem, but it's important to keep it in perspective. Although our property crime rates are among the worst in the country, our violence rates are not. According to the most recent reports I could access, with the exception of rape, Lane County was only slightly worse than average for violent crime rates until last year. For the last two years the robbery, assault and homicide rates have increased sharply, but we're still better than many larger cities, and folks don't obsess over this stuff there. it's too early to say whether the recent changes are statistically significant or enough to call a trend.

The influx of criminal street gangs from L.A., Chicago and other areas is a concern, and the drive-by shootings are frightening, but they may be isolated events too. I think it's too early to project how our crime rate will compare over the longer course.

On the other hand, if we continue on the present track, and the rest of the DA's predictions come true as the last few have, I suspect that even South Eugene will support return of at least 1970s law enforcement staffing levels :-)

I agree with everything you and Lance said about the taxes. If I lived in Springfield I would have voted the same way, but I live over here in France, so the only public safety options we have input on are the county tax plans, and they never offer a complete fix. It's always a "Christmas tree" package of "treatment", "prevention" and a bunch of other stuff in the "nice-to-have" department. Even the last county tax proposal, which would have been a significant improvement, would not have brought county law enforcement staffing anywhere near average for the US or even Oregon. County officials admitted it would take three or four times as much money to build a right-sized jail and staff the system at average levels, but they knew Lane County voters would see national average as a "Cadillac Plan", so they didn't even try. Obviously, they were right. We even voted down the "Pinto Plan" :)

I don't know whether a split tax-rate is legal or feasible, but I have another thought. The City of Eugene spends a TON of money on stuff nobody but the city council wants. When it comes to city services, more citizens want Police, Fire, Parks, roads and building permits. We don't need to spend $40,000 sending ancient city councilors to our "sister city" in Japan, for example. That just pisses people like me off. We don't need a "Human Rights Advisory Group", or "Civil Rights Commissions". What do they do anyway? They don't need all the administrative fat they have either.

One good thing has come from the county running out of money so long ago. It has taught them a painful lesson about being more careful with their money. The county has thinned out herds of managers and supervisors over the last two decades. It would be fine with me if that happened at the city too. (That report showed the county had almost 13 line-workers per supervisor, while the city of Eugene had only 6 workers per supervisor. That sounds like Eugene could afford to lose some management. We've had to do that at the company I work for, so it seems appropriate to consider the same plan for the government too.) The County also sues the PERS system with the city, and the slashing of public employee retirement programs is saving millions per year around the state.

I voted for ballot measure 5. Everybody agrees measure 5 and the loss of logging caused the demise of Oregon government services (which were very good when I was in high school). When I voted I didn't think I'd be giving a big windfall to huge companies and corporations. I was just trying to get some tax relief for homeowners like me. (At that time the tax on a $75,000 house in Eugene was over $2,500 per year -- about $34 per $1,000 of assessed value!). Since then I've been told Measure 5 is saving Weyerhauser enough in annual property taxes to fully fund the cost of one of Springfield's elementary schools, teachers and all. I don't think anybody intended that.

I'm worried about all the awful crime numbers, and our family takes steps to avoid being victimized. You can't stop your car from being stolen, but there is a lot you CAN do to minimize personal safety risks. In the long term we can hope for restoration of basic county law enforcement services, especially those parts that are essential to the functioning of the city public safety systems. My biggest concern is the harm our reputation is doing by attracting criminals from out of state. Our comparatively lenient sentencing and the absence of a normal jail may continue to accelerate the influx of out-of-state criminals who see our area as easy pickins.

The county has made it clear they're not planning to ask us for any more money, as they see the last couple votes as "a mandate that the public does not support law enforcement". They see the last few votes as a demand to fund other services, like extension service and the dog kennel, and let public safety services "fly into the ground for lack of fuel". That's not the way I read the vote, but it's hard to argue with the fact that very few people ever show up to support public safety programs, while dozens show up to speak for the dog kennel program.

All we can do is look to the safety of our families, be prudent, and sit back and watch.