January 12, 2004
Lane County, Oregon, no longer has any police investigating property crimes.
In a stunning example of how American efforts to promote national security are in fact endangering the security of Americans where they actually live, the
Eugene Register-Guard reports that budget cuts have completely eliminated funds for investigating crimes against property in the parts of the county outside Eugene city limits.
No fund to fight property crimes. The true story of "security" in Bush's America.
Once upon a time, the Lane County sheriff's office had two detectives dedicated to investigating property crimes.
Budget cuts soon lowered that number to one - Detective Tim Roos, who in the 70 percent of his workday allotted to investigating property crimes, tried his best to track down suspects and deliver cases to the district attorney.
But Roos retired in July and headed to Bosnia to help establish a civilian police force there. His position was eliminated in last year's budget process, and the agency has no plans to hire a replacement, police services Capt. Bret Freeman said.
There's no money for it, Freeman said, and there may be even less money in the future if outgoing county board chairman Peter Sorenson is correct. In his county address last week, Sorenson predicted $4.6 million in countywide across-the-board cuts in the coming year.
Currently, county residents who report burglaries, car thefts, identity theft, vandalism or other property crimes have a very slim chance of ever seeing an arrest in their cases.
"It's not that we don't want to help people," Freeman said. "It's that we cannot help people."
Victims are lucky if a deputy even shows up to take a report these days. Instead, they're often instructed to download a report form from the county's Web site and mail it in, or they can request a form be mailed to them, Freeman said.
Patrol deputies who have time between emergency calls try to follow up as much as they can, but with an average of two deputies and one sergeant patrolling 4,618 square miles of unincorporated land, there's not a lot of opportunity for investigation, the captain said.
So if your house is broken into, they can't even investigate it. Well, I feel much safer knowing that. And I wonder what criminals reading this would think. And it was the lead article on the front page of the Sunday edition, so I'm sure they saw it. That's really great.
But I guess, since it's not New York City, which is as far from here as Moscow is from London, security doesn't matter. We're just a third world colony anyway, so what's the difference? I mean, it's not like we live in New Hampshire or Iowa or have any say in who's running the country.
And Bush wants to spend trillions to go to the moon and Mars, something that is directly aimed at his corporate aerospace constituencies in Texas and California. While Oregon's schools are (have already, actually) eliminating science programs. Forget about funds for telescopes and such. School kids don't vote or contribute to politicians.
And I love that part about the police officer going off to establish police forces in Bosnia. That's precious. And where is the money for that coming from? American tax dollars paid in part by the citizens of Oregon? I wonder.
"I'm not going to try to foretell the future," Freeman said. "But additional reductions in money means additional reductions in service."
