Lack of patrol deputies forces Lincoln County sheriff to end responses to nuisance and low-level criminal calls in rural areas

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com

The Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputies are no longer responding to nuisance and some lower-level criminal complaints in Yachats and unincorporated areas of the county because of a lack of patrol deputies. The order by Sheriff Curtis Landers took effect Sunday.

Landers said the unprecedented change was “due to an extraordinary low number of deputies available to handle emergency calls” and the need to fully honor five law enforcement contracts.

“This is a huge change for us,” Landers told YachatsNews. “This was a hard decision.”

Patrol deputies in unincorporated areas of the county and areas outside the cities of Newport, Lincoln City and Toledo will generally not respond to:

• Noise complaints (including barking dogs) when there are no animal services deputies on duty;
• Camping complaints;
• Civil disputes;
• Home or business alarms;
• General welfare checks;
• Drug complaints that are based on personal use amounts;
• Non-criminal vehicle crashes; and
• Criminal complaints involving minor property crimes with no suspects, which will be referred to the sheriff’s online reporting system.

Instead, patrol deputies will focus primarily on responding to emergency and in-progress calls for service, the sheriff said.

“We have been evaluating this situation for over a year and it doesn’t seem to be improving,” Landers said in making the announcement.

Last February, patrol deputies agreed to work rotating 12-hour shifts to try to stretch coverage, but that wasn’t enough.

The sheriff’s office has contracts to provide two deputies in the city of Waldport, two in Siletz, has two deputies primarily funded by the Oregon Marine Board, one funded partially by forest landowners, and a school resource officer in Waldport and Toledo half funded by the Lincoln County School District.

The Waldport contract costs that city $348,500 a year and is its single, largest expense.

“We are very fortunate to have these contracts and we want to make sure we are fulfilling them,” Landers said. “We were spreading our resources too thin and were unable to adequately and consistently uphold our commitments.”

Landers said contract deputies will no longer assist fellow deputies and other police or first responders “outside of their contract areas except for emergency situations.”

The number of patrol deputies funded by the general fund has relatively stayed the same over the last 30 years, Landers said, as the county’s population and calls for service continued to grow. The department responds to between 24,000 to 27,000 calls a year.

Landers said the current low level of staffing can be attributed to several factors – no increase in the number of patrol deputies financed by the county’s general fund, turnover due to retirements, normal attrition and transfers, hiring restrictions dating back to 2020, and the difficulty of attracting enough new people into law enforcement.

“Even if we have every position filled and trained, 12 patrol deputies is not enough to fulfill our mission to enhance public safety …” Landers said.

The sheriff’s patrol division has five deputies in training and three vacancies, Lander said. There are also two vacant detective and two vacant sergeant positions, Landers said.

A new hire needs to attend a four-month police academy operated by the state, which has struggled to schedule recruits, and then spend another four months with their field training officer before they become approved for solo patrols.

Deputies will be reprioritizing their time for emergency response, including life-threatening situations.

“We want our deputies to be proactive again which will help reduce crime,” Landers said in the announcement. “Responding to every call we receive spreads our resources very thin and makes us unable to be proactive and able to respond to in-progress emergency situations. We hope this will improve service to those most threatening situations.”

Rural levy in offing?

The sheriff’s budget for fiscal 2022-23 totals $17 million, which includes $8.2 million to operate the county jail and $4.6 million for its patrol division. The office also oversees the county’s only animal shelter and emergency management response.

“It’s generally felt that we need more people,” Landers told YachatsNews, “it’s just how we can pay for them.”

Landers has been unable to wrestle more money from the county budget to add staff. He told YachatsNews the deputy hiring process was hampered during the pandemic in 2020 when county commissioners required that any vacancy go unfilled for six months before evaluating whether it should be filled.

Because of the long time needed to recruit, screen, conduct background checks and then train new deputies, Landers said, “We’re still seeing the effects of that decision.”

The sheriff said he is now trying to convince commissioners to allow him to “over hire” – having people in the hiring process so that when someone retires, quits or transfers there is someone else ready to step in.

“We know we’re always going to be 1-2 people short, so let’s get more people in the pipeline,” Landers said.

A request to Lincoln County voters in 2018 to raise property taxes to add $3 million to $4 million a year for five years to the overall sheriff’s budget was turned down. Although it promised a return to around-the-clock patrols, something the sheriff’s office has not had since 1993, the money was also spread out over a large variety of programs.

Landers told YachatsNews he’s now thinking about proposing a levy that would focus on adding patrol deputies in specific rural areas, not countrywide that would be decided by rural voters. Such “enhanced patrol districts” are used by many Oregon counties, including Linn, Deschutes and Washington counties.

“I see the need there and what has worked elsewhere,” he said.

Deputies stretched thin

Landers said the change is a big one for patrol deputies, who are eager to help whenever and wherever they can.

“It’s a huge change,” he said. “The deputies didn’t want to give up going to every call. But these guys are stretched too thin. This will help them respond better and be more pro-active instead of running from call to call.

“Technology has made then more efficient, but we’re lacking in pro-active work, Landers said. “But we’ll also be ready to make adjustments as needed.”

• Quinton Smith, a longtime Oregon journalist, is the founder and editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com