Josephine County Still Reeling

The City Council in Grants Pass, OR has voted to fund 20 beds in the Josephine County jail by paying $1 million to the county. 

Tired of seeing people arrested on criminal charges walk free for lack of jail space, the city of Grants Pass is paying nearly $1 million for its own beds in the county jail.
And to make sure the bad guys know it, the city will be posting signs around town saying lawbreakers can expect to be prosecuted.

The voters in the county have repeatedly voted down property tax increases to fund law enforcement, forcing some communities to organize armed citizen patrols to make up for lack of law enforcement, a move that the County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson says “I hold my breath, every day, for everything”.  He is not thrilled that citizens are arming themselves for protection, but he can't provide coverage with the funding he has.

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.

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.

 My thought is that the 20 beds will be filled quickly, it's not enough to stop the bleeding, only slow it down a little.