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."
 permalink, posted by mike on Monday, January 12, 2004 at 10:55 AM
End of entries.
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CATEGORIES
LINKS / BLOGROLL
THE BLOGOSPHERE
Group blogs and centers
Wood s Lot. Maybe the most consistently interesting weblog out there. Superb selections on all sorts of topics, especially art and literature. Tons of links too.
Blog Sisters, a group blog, with a-z links to individuals. More by the ladies at Blogs by Women.
Good community blogs at Boing Boing, Metafilter and Kuro5hin.
The Wibsite, wiblog.com. British bloggers.
Fairvue Central hosts the Bloggies, awards for best weblogs in different categories from all over the world. See the nominees for 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 (in progress).
Iraqi blogs
Today in Iraq.
A Family in Baghdad.
Baghdad Burning.
Healing Iraq.
Salam Pax.
G in Baghdad.
Ishtar talking.
The Mesopotamian.
Iraq at a glance.
Hammorabi.
Nabil's blog.
Baghdadee.
Fayrouz.
Iraq the model.
Iraq and Iraqis.
Road of a nation.
Ihath - Losing myself.
Sun of Iraq.
Back to Iraq.
Individual blogs
Robert Hunter's journal.
Follow Me Here.
Caterina.net.
Avram's journal.
Rebecca's Pocket.
Alas, a Blog.
Weblog Wannabe.
The Rittenhouse Review.
Margaret Cho Blog.
The Oregon Blog.
Angry Bear.
Brad DeLong.
Dohiyi Mir.
Eschaton.
Hullabaloo.
Nathan Newman.
Orcinus.
Steve Gilliard's News Blog.
Tapped.
Tbogg.
Blogging communities
Lists of bloggers in these areas.
Austin, Texas.
Beltway Bloggers, Washington, DC.
Boston, Massachusetts.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Chicago, Illinois.
Dallas Ft. Worth, Texas.
London, United Kingdom.
New York, New York.
San Diego, California.
Seattle, Washington.
St. Louis, Missouri.
Washington, DC.
GENERAL LINKS, NOT BLOGS
News, magazines, reference
The sites where I do my usual news browsing, and get most of my articles and links.
Common Dreams.
Refdesk, info on absolutely everything. A comprehensive newspaper page, listed by US states and countries, and an encyclopedia.
BBC News, BBCi Home, BBC Radio, categories, history topics.
The World News Network, wn.com, gathers news sites from all over the world, country by country.
Wikipedia, online encyclopedia.
The Asian Times.
The Scotsman.
The Moscow Times. Russian perspectives and news. The Russia Post is a World News site with links to other Russian sites.
The Black Commentator.
Aljazeera Net in English.
Outlook India.
GENERAL INTEREST
History, literature, philosophy and other subjects, mostly related to the works in the Galileo Library.
Online Clarity. An I Ching community. Newsletter, readings, etc.
Sacred Books of the East. A 19th century project of eastern literature.
Bartleby.com. Great books online.
Bibliomania. Free online literature and study guides. Lots of classics and reading resources.
THE ARTS
Vincent van Gogh Gallery. Complete paintings and writings, and a nice arts links page. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Bob Dylan, live performances.
Grateful Dead, GD Radio.
David Byrne, radio station.
New Pages. Book and reading related center, lots of alternative publishing links and weblog.
Reading Rat. Reading center with lots of links.
Avid reader web ring.
The Louvre. Other Parisian museums.
The Web Museum, index of artists. Extremely high quality images.
August Rodin web org.
Mark Harden's Artchive.
Emile Kren's Web Gallery of Art.
Artcyclopedia. A fine art search engine. Historical and current, with a nice museum list.
Plagiarist.com poetry archive. Classic and modern plus news, articles, forums, etc. View a random poem.
Rotten Tomatoes. Film center, with collected reviews, ratings and forums.
Aint It Cool News. Movie reviews and previews from a fan's perspective.
Roger Ebert's film reviews.
Scott McCloud. The latest in the world of cartoonists.
YouTube. Video center.
MILD EROTICA
Domai.com. Eolake Stobblehouse's extraordinary, and extremely tasteful, paean to pretty girls, updated daily. Nudity yes, sex definitely not. Nice general purpose links too.
Simple nudes. Lots of links.
Vintage nudes. Pin-ups and other classics.
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