ortunately for partying college students, noise complaints on busy weekends often don’t make it to the top of the understaffed Eugene Police Department’s list of priorities. But, Eugene police say, don’t count on it.
Eugene Police Department Lt. Scott Fellman said police can’t always respond to calls because they are understaffed, but Fellman assured that officers always respond to life-threatening calls right away.
“The requests for service are sometimes more than the number of officers on patrol that can respond,” he said.
Fellman has been off-duty and called police to make a loud noise complaint, but he said no one responded right away.
“There have been times where I haven’t been able to get through to talk to someone, and when I do, there’s nobody to respond,” he said.
Fellman said location doesn’t play a part in what calls police respond to, and added that officers respond to the West University neighborhood as quickly as possible.
“It doesn’t matter where it is,” Fellman said. “It’s based on the nature of the call.”
Eugene police prioritize calls based on six categories. In-progress calls that are life threatening are the agency’s main concern, Fellman said, and calls for in-progress property damage are its second priority. A third-priority call is a crime-in-progress in which there is no significant physical threat of injury.
“We’re going to dispatch those first three immediately, or as quickly as possible,” Eugene police Communications Supervisor April Hogan said.
Lower priority calls include crimes that already happened that officers need to take a report for.
“An example would be property that is already damaged,” Fellman said. “The person is gone, we don’t know where they are, but we still need to come out and take a report. Of course we don’t want to wait forever, but it can wait.”
When a Eugene police officer can’t respond to a call right away, a note in the police log reads, “insufficient units” or, “no available units.”
Hogan said the term can be somewhat misleading on the police logs, which are available for the public on EPD’s Web site. She added that it only happens when officers are directed to a more serious crime in which someone’s life is threatened.
“We only have so many officers,” Hogan said. “We’re going to use them efficiently to maintain a safe environment for the officers and the community. It’s not rocket science; we’re going to hold the loud party call.”
Holding certain calls typically happens on Fridays and Saturdays during the early morning and late evening hours, Fellman said. He added that although more officers are on patrol during the weekends, more criminal activity takes place. Last Friday and Saturday, one “insufficient units” note was placed in the log. A call last Thursday for a loud noise complaint reported at almost 1 a.m. in the West University neighborhood was labeled with an “insufficient units” tag 30 minutes later. These notations are used in the log so that officers can respond to them later.
“We just don’t have enough cops to go to everything,” Fellman said.
He said the situation, as a community member and a member of the Eugene police, is sometimes frustrating.
“It happens more than we’d like it to,” he said. “We got into this business to help people and make the community safer, but when we don’t have the resources to take care of everything, it’s frustrating.”
Eugene police crime analyst Stan Lenhart told the Emerald earlier this month that anywhere from 12 to 17 officers patrol Eugene at any given time. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Eugene had more than 144,000 residents in 2005.
Eugene police spokeswoman Melinda Kletzok said understaffing plays a part in not being able to respond to all calls right away. Oregon ranks last in the country for officers per capita, according to the EPD. The national average for officers per thousand people is 2.41; Oregon’s is 1.58; and Eugene’s is 1.25.
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