Thomas Patterson for The New York Times
Because of cuts to law enforcement in Josephine County, Ore., volunteers like Glenn Woodbury of Citizens Against Crime have taken up patrols. More Photos »
GRANTS PASS, Ore. — It might be well established by now that money cannot buy happiness. But can it buy public safety?
If you ask Sgt. Todd Moran of the Grants Pass police, the answer is unquestionably yes. Burglaries were up almost 70 percent last year in his city of 35,000 about an hour north of the California border. Theft cases, up almost 80 percent. And at least part of the reason, he said, is an awareness by criminals that their actions are increasingly without consequences in cash-starved Josephine County, where the jail the city depends on is mostly closed for lack of money.
Even a felony suspect arrested with stolen goods or drugs in hand is usually just given a citation and released. Better financing for the county's jails and prosecutors is the only way forward, Sergeant Moran said.
"It's just broken," he said as he drove through town on a recent afternoon patrol.
Now drive an hour south and meet Sam Nichols and Glenn Woodbury, who volunteer with a group called Citizens Against Crime. They say that financial troubles are in fact strengthening the community and that citizen crime patrols like theirs are proving that money — meaning higher taxes — is not the solution.
They began patrolling the back roads of the county last summer after staffing at the sheriff's office was gutted by budget cuts. With local residents on watch, crime rates in their area have fallen to near zero, said Mr. Nichols, a retired marina manager, as he drove on a recent evening, with Mr. Woodbury in the passenger seat shining a spotlight into the woods and winding dark driveways.
"Eleven months without a reported theft," Mr. Nichols said, a handgun strapped to his hip, as an orange light flashed on the roof.
Concerns about crime and taxes are civic constants in America. And questions about the limits of citizen response have come under intense focus this summer during the trial of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, while on volunteer patrol last year at a housing complex in Florida.
But the debate here goes much deeper, to the question of what government is for and how community is to be defined.
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.
"I hold my breath, every day, for everything," said Sheriff Gil Gilbertson in an interview in his office, where images of John Wayne lined the walls.
The causes of Josephine County's plight are convoluted and complex, and echoed in varying degrees across a swath of Oregon timber country that was scarred a century ago by a weird historical wrinkle: the collapse of the Oregon and California, or O&C, Railroad. Around World War I, the railroad's lands were taken over by the federal government, leaving almost two-thirds of Josephine County, which is about the size of Rhode Island, in federal ownership. And since the federal government pays no property taxes, Congress established a system channeling revenues from the sale of timber, which the county has in abundance.
But as federal timber harvests have been reduced, the lush payments that kept property taxes low have fallen to a trickle. And a federal stopgap payment measure to make up for the timber money was phased out last year. County residents, meanwhile, have voted multiple times, most recently in May, against raising their property taxes to resolve the shortfall.
"It's a slow-motion disaster," said Bruce A. Weber, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Oregon State University and the director of the Rural Studies Program. And with federal spending programs in retreat and the state budget under continued stress, he said, no fix is easy.
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