In Oregon, a Demand for Safety, but Not on Their Dime
Thomas Patterson for The New York Times
Because of cuts to law enforcement in Josephine County, Ore., volunteers like Glenn Woodbury of Citizens Against Crime have taken up patrols. More Photos »
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: July 5, 2013
GRANTS PASS, Ore. — It might be well established by now that money cannot buy happiness. But can it buy public safety?
A meeting for the citizen group Secure Our Safety. More Photos »
If you ask Sgt. Todd Moran of the Grants Pass police, the answer is unquestionably yes. Burglaries were up almost 70 percent last year in his city of 35,000 about an hour north of the California border. Theft cases, up almost 80 percent. And at least part of the reason, he said, is an awareness by criminals that their actions are increasingly without consequences in cash-starved Josephine County, where the jail the city depends on is mostly closed for lack of money.
Even a felony suspect arrested with stolen goods or drugs in hand is usually just given a citation and released. Better financing for the county’s jails and prosecutors is the only way forward, Sergeant Moran said.
“It’s just broken,” he said as he drove through town on a recent afternoon patrol.
Now drive an hour south and meet Sam Nichols and Glenn Woodbury, who volunteer with a group called Citizens Against Crime. They say that financial troubles are in fact strengthening the community and that citizen crime patrols like theirs are proving that money — meaning higher taxes — is not the solution.
They began patrolling the back roads of the county last summer after staffing at the sheriff’s office was gutted by budget cuts. With local residents on watch, crime rates in their area have fallen to near zero, said Mr. Nichols, a retired marina manager, as he drove on a recent evening, with Mr. Woodbury in the passenger seat shining a spotlight into the woods and winding dark driveways.
“Eleven months without a reported theft,” Mr. Nichols said, a handgun strapped to his hip, as an orange light flashed on the roof.
Concerns about crime and taxes are civic constants in America. And questions about the limits of citizen response have come under intense focus this summer during the trial of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, while on volunteer patrol last year at a housing complex in Florida.
But the debate here goes much deeper, to the question of what government is for and how community is to be defined.
With the fiscal year that started on July 1, the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office now has exactly one deputy left available for general calls in a county of 83,000 people — down from a high of 22 at full staffing a few years ago. Citizen applications to carry a concealed weapon, meanwhile, rose 49 percent last year, according to county records.
At grocery stores in Grants Pass, stopping and citing shoplifters — sometimes with whole carts of beer or food in tow — have become part of the daily law enforcement routine.
“I hold my breath, every day, for everything,” said Sheriff Gil Gilbertson in an interview in his office, where images of John Wayne lined the walls.
The causes of Josephine County’s plight are convoluted and complex, and echoed in varying degrees across a swath of Oregon timber country that was scarred a century ago by a weird historical wrinkle: the collapse of the Oregon and California, or O&C, Railroad. Around World War I, the railroad’s lands were taken over by the federal government, leaving almost two-thirds of Josephine County, which is about the size of Rhode Island, in federal ownership. And since the federal government pays no property taxes, Congress established a system channeling revenues from the sale of timber, which the county has in abundance.
But as federal timber harvests have been reduced, the lush payments that kept property taxes low have fallen to a trickle. And a federal stopgap payment measure to make up for the timber money was phased out last year. County residents, meanwhile, have voted multiple times, most recently in May, against raising their property taxes to resolve the shortfall.
“It’s a slow-motion disaster,” said Bruce A. Weber, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Oregon State University and the director of the Rural Studies Program. And with federal spending programs in retreat and the state budget under continued stress, he said, no fix is easy.
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Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, is working on a package of bills that would expand what he called “sustainable” levels of timber cutting — and thus tax revenue — to Josephine and the other O&C counties. But that long-term relief would be years away. In the meantime, he said in an interview, he hopes to get a temporary financing package through the House and Senate by the end of this year. The State Legislature in Salem is also considering emergency rescue plans.
Sheriff Gil Gilbertson’s office has one deputy available for calls in a county of 83,000 people. More Photos »
Josephine County has struggled financially as federal timber money has been reduced. More Photos »
Keith O. Heck, a county commissioner, said he fears that the county could break apart into balkanized camps of self-government, each on its own lookout, if a fix to the problem is not found soon.
“Freedom demands structure,” he said. “If you don’t have some structure to that freedom, there’s nothing that is free — everything just becomes a crapshoot and it’s just who’s got the biggest dice.”
At the Grants Pass Liquor Store, it all comes down to whether customers feel safe, said Jack Ingvaldson, the owner. Lately, he said, some do not.
“We have homeless people sitting in the alleyway — they drink, urinate, defecate, fornicate — whatever they can get away with,” he said. And a ticket or citation from a police officer? They laugh and stay put. “They don’t care — they know there’s nowhere to put them,” he said.
Some residents said they believe the crime statistics and stories are being exaggerated, or used for political effect, if and when another property tax increase is proposed on the ballot. Mr. Woodbury of the Citizens Against Crime group, for one, said he thinks it will not work.
“We’re among thousands of people in the country that are just to the point of not ever voting for another tax, whether it be public safety, or any type of an increase,” he said.
Even without a resurgent timber-cutting plan, there are already worries that balkanized camps of armed residents could create new tensions. On a recent morning, for example, Sheriff Gilbertson was called to investigate a complaint that someone had fired shots at a crew of loggers. The gunman was gone by the time the sheriff arrived. But the encounter, he said, gave him another reason to worry. The loggers said they planned to return to the job armed next time, ready for self-defense.
