Salem Police, Polk County team up to address theft

Salem Police Department and Polk County Sheriff’s Office collaborated in late November in a joint mission to address retail theft in West Salem. 

“There was a discussion going on about theft in the area, especially theft with the businesses along the Wallace Marine Park area,” said SPD Chief Trevor Womack. “And so [PCSO] Sheriff Mark Garton and I talked and we decided to do a joint mission to have an increased presence to try to prevent crime.”

The stint, which was targeted at stores such as Roth’s and Safeway along the Wallace Road and Edgewater Street areas, lasted from November 18 to November 26 and led to seven arrests for PCSO and one crime reported for SPD. 

Sheriff Garton made sure to involve the public in this operation as well, since the business owners were the ones most affected by the theft. “We went to the businesses, gave them our cell numbers and said, ‘when you see a theft, call us, we'll arrest them and take them to jail,’” Garton said. “And so that's what we did, and we were successful at that.”

Is theft on the rise across Salem? It depends on who you ask. 

Garton, who’s been with the county for 19 years, believes business owners don’t call and report the thefts “because it's more time consuming for them to upload the video and type a record out,” he said, “and then never hear from anyone. I dealt with that same exact issue early on when we first tried to pass our Public Safety Levy back in 2016. Our stats went down because we only had like seven or eight bodies and people knew we weren't on 24/7, so they just didn't call.”

Chief Womack says he agrees with that, to a point, but he says he can also see the trends leaning downward for property crimes like theft. “For me, I look at things like car theft and burglary, those are well-reported crimes, and so when you see auto theft going down, you see burglaries going down, and also larceny or low level thefts going down. I think there could be some underreporting regarding the larcenies, but the higher level crimes also indicate that there's a trend line down, so I think overall theft in general is reducing in West Salem.”

Whether theft is on the rise or not, the bigger obstacle at hand, the heart of the matter, is staffing. SPD has been under a staffing shortage due to budget constraints. This is something Womack has been battling since he was hired five years ago. Currently, the city employs one-hundred and ninety-six officers. Eugene, with a similar population size of just over one-hundred and seventy-seven thousand residents, sees two-hundred and twenty-two officers spread across its city. 

“We had a community policing audit and two different independent analyses done when I first arrived in 2021,” Womack said. “And it showed that we were greatly understaffed. We need about 60 more police officers if we want to implement a more proactive community policing type model that the community was asking for.”

Out of Oregon’s eight most populous cities, Salem ranks eighth for staffing, as far as officers per 1000 residents go. “And yet we have the second-highest violent crime rate in Oregon, only behind Portland,” Womack said. “So it puts a lot of pressure on the organization, and forces us to constantly try to balance competing priorities. But it also makes me so proud of our people because they literally do more with less every day as compared to other cities in Oregon.”’

Sheriff Garton said he knows the agency is overwhelmed, and can see the problems that occur as a result. The theft operation was, at least in part, an effort to try and address what he believes is a lack of police presence within West Salem. “It’s just the reality over there, so I just want to help,” he said. “I just want to help bring it together and curtail some of that outrageous stuff that's going on over there. Salem is a different animal, you know, in the grand scheme of things. They have North Salem as a problem area, but I just don't see the presence in West Salem that I think they deserve. So I'm just trying to find ways to be able to help with that livability issue since they're kind of stuck right now over in Salem.”

In 2024, SPD faced significant budget cuts to various services within the agency. Earlier this year in May, the city of Salem voted on and approved a tax levy that helped bring back some of those services. Those levies are renewed every five years.

With fewer officers and varying call loads to address, Womack has to balance where he sends his officers depending on what kind of crimes are occurring. “Traditionally West Salem has fewer calls for services and less crime than other parts of the city, so there may not be as many officers on that side of the river just because there's more call load on the other side of the river.” He said, in general, there are a couple of officers per shift assigned to the West Salem district, one of six districts. 

Compounding the staffing shortage is that SPD straddles two different counties: Marion and Polk, and with the enactment of Senate Bill 48 in 2021, each county approaches its pretrial release system differently. “As a police chief, you kind of have to navigate and understand two different courts,” Womack said, “two different District Attorneys, two different behavioral health service systems, housing support systems, and all the services that are traditionally provided by a county that also spill over into the public safety realm. So it is unique trying to understand and navigate the little differences between the two counties.”

Garton says the differences between the two counties’ approach to the senate bill might determine how one officer in SPD approaches an arrest versus an officer within the county. 

“In Polk County,” he said, “if you’ve never been arrested before, you could potentially be booked and released. But it depends on the severity of the charge. You might stay in jail, even though it might be your first offense.”

Jail capacities in both counties differ – Polk County’s is larger, therefore allowing more room for types of crimes than in Marion County. 

“There's a lot more violent crime on the Marion County side, and the capacity of the jail on that side gets full faster, with more serious crimes,” Womack said. “So a lot of times we can't really keep or hold people that have committed thefts or burglaries as long as somebody over in Polk County.”

Since the initial operation was a success in terms of arresting people – five of the seven arrested are still in jail – Garton would like to continue using his services to address theft in West Salem. “We're probably going to do it, whether Salem does it or not,” he said. “We're going to do it on a regular  basis, probably once a month or so, just so that the thieves over there that see us might think hey, we don't know when they're going to be coming to take Salem. Just to keep them on their toes.”

On the other side of the river, Womack is setting up his own resources to ensure theft crimes are being addressed. “We just held a loss prevention officer training,” he said. Those are the private security-type people that work for the retail outlets, called loss prevention officers. And we did training with both counties as partners, so the district attorney in Polk County, our Marion County District Attorney, and our officers, right here at our facility in November.”

The training provided information on how to report crimes through SPD’s online reporting system. Womack says he encourages folks to use this system, as it provides a more efficient use of resources because it places less demand on officer response time. 

To fill in some of the gaps, the state has issued the agency grants to help with overtime costs for operations like the one run in November. 

Agencies collaborating with one another is not uncommon in the policing community, and both Womack and Garton are grateful for the partnerships they have. “At any given moment, any one of our agencies can kind of get overwhelmed, which can quickly drain all our patrol resources,” Garton said. “Almost daily, we're helping each other out with calls here and there, backing each other up.”