Tom Turner sees the effects of Lane County’s budget crisis walk through the front door of the Sheriff’s Office every day.
A record number of county residents are expected apply for concealed handgun permits this year. The licenses are only given at the Sheriff’s Office, making for a painfully ironic scene for Turner to watch as lines of people – many of whom say they’re applying because they don’t feel safe – arm themselves with permits for protection that the county can barely provide them.
“There’s a line out here every day getting their fingerprints and getting their gun permits,” Turner, the undersheriff and a law enforcement veteran since 1982, said. “This may be truly indicative of a response people are having because they think they might need to protect themselves.”
Faced with longer response times and fewer deputies, many of the 93,500 Lane County residents who live outside city limits in the county believe having a concealed handgun is a necessary step. The Sheriff’s Office expects a record of more than 1,250 permits to be issued this year in the county, up from 680 in 2005, 811 in 2006 and 950 last year. A fear of “vigilantism” by law enforcement hasn’t stopped interest.
For example, 20 residents of Mapleton and three from McKenzie Bridge, two unincorporated towns around 50 minutes away from Eugene to the west and east, respectively, applied for and received licenses between January 2007 and the end of June 2008.
“It’s one of those things in a nutshell that it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” said John Chilberto, a McKenzie Bridge resident who applied for a license in September 2007.
“I agree that there are some people up here who’ve gotten them because of rural crime,” said Robert Wert, 77, himself a McKenzie Bridge resident.
Lane County District Attorney-elect Alex Gardner said public protection should never have come to this.
“I think the appropriate way to handle a public safety crisis is to fund public safety like they do in the rest of the country,” Gardner said.
For decades, Lane County depended on federal timber money to fund its services. This year the payments would have been $47 million. But in June, Congress failed to pass a bill that would have extended payments. Without it, the crunch has handcuffed the Sheriff’s Office, which laid off 63 workers and didn’t fill vacant positions on nearly a third of its force.
Now, because of the lack of funding, only two sheriff’s deputies and a sergeant are available for the entire county on a typical night. Funding the around-the-clock coverage almost didn’t happen: In late May, the office got the funds to provide 24-hour county coverage next year instead of the proposed 20-hour patrolling that was estimated when the proposed 2008-2008 county budget was released in April.
Occasionally, two additional deputies working as a “traffic team” can be added, raising the capability to five units. For residents, this means increased response times – if they respond at all. Turner said the office is forced to prioritize its calls to “anything that’s a life-threatening event.”
“It’s created a very crime-friendly environment,” Gardner said.
A decade ago, Wert knew of a group of locals who tried to curb such a situation by forming what he called a “vigilante group.” Wert, who’s had a concealed handgun permit for 20 years, said the group was non-violent but “used to check on cars that didn’t belong in the area and people who didn’t belong in the area.”
This year, Wert said he hasn’t heard of such a group.
Not all up to the citizens
Residents in cities like Mapleton and McKenzie Bridge aren’t being left completely unprotected.
Turner said that “mutual aid agreements” between cities and counties have existed for years, lending help to the surrounding areas. Officers from Florence can be dispatched the 15 miles to Mapleton, or Eugene/Springfield officers to McKenzie Bridge, for example. The Sheriff’s Office is also retaining resident volunteer deputies who receive training and accompany deputies.
It’s not a good time to be cutting services.
Lane County’s rates of rape, burglary and aggravated assault increased in 2007, according to the FBI Crime Index. For property crimes, Lane County isn’t as good, with a much higher average than the state and nation. In 2005, there were only 18 counties in the entire nation that had worse auto theft crime than Lane County. It doesn’t help that the county has the lowest density of officers per capita in the nation.
Terry Smith, a Lane County analyst, said that what looks like decreased crime is actually the opposite. Because of the fewer deputies and Gardner’s announcement that he doesn’t have the resources to prosecute misdemeanors, fewer people are reporting crimes.
It’s a legitimate complaint for Wert, who had burglars steal more than $4,000 of equipment from his garage five years ago while he was in the hospital for a month.
“I reported it, but I couldn’t even get a deputy to come up and check it out,” Wert said. “I don’t blame this on the Sheriff’s department. But it’s a very large area and you can figure that if an emergency comes up, unless a patrol car happens to be in the area, you’ll be waiting for a half-hour before anyone arrives.”
Facing a bleak future
Turner said the temporary monies don’t fix the underlying problem of how the Sheriff’s Office is structured at a loss. The department’s annual 3 percent growth is offset by the current 6 percent inflation rate. In addition, by dipping into the county’s reserve funds for 24-hour service, it could cost the county another 30 jobs in the 2010-11 fiscal year.
“This is kind of a Band-Aid feel,” Turner said. “It’s just like a savings account: When it’s over and you have no way of replenishing it, it’s over.
“It’s built to crash.”
Residents will feel the cuts in the courtroom, as well. In 1981, the District Attorney’s Office had 11 investigators; today, there is one.
“We don’t promise to do the job adequately anymore,” Gardner said. “We promise to do it very well with the resources we have left.”
The only positive sign for Turner to come out of the situation is that residents are more aware of the county’s problems. Despite the level of frustration that citizens and law enforcement have voiced at county budget committee meetings since the budget’s proposal, public financing isn’t a sure bet. In the past two decades, a new tax has been proposed, and rejected, by the county 13 times.
Turner has been through budget cuts before. In fact, he left the Sheriff’s Office to work for the Eugene Police in 1982 because of them. Now they’re back.
“A Sheriff’s Office,” he said, “is a tough room to be in.”
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