 Sheriff’s Office provides many services
by Bruce Bartlett
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) presented an interesting program about its many activities at last month’s CPO 1 meeting. Some of that information is included here. They will be issuing their updated Strategic Plan soon, and we hope to bring you the highlights of that in an upcoming issue.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office is a full-service agency providing all traditional law-enforcement functions, including countywide patrol and investigations throughout Washington County, irrespective of municipal boundaries. The Sheriff is also contracted by Gaston and Banks, cities too small to have their own police departments, to provide deputies dedicated to serving those municipalities. The Sheriff’s office is the primary law enforcement service provider for the unincorporated Cedar Mill community, along with the many other urban unincorporated areas of the county.
 A sheriff is fundamentally different from a chief of police. A chief is ordinarily appointed by a city council. Your sheriff is directly elected by a vote of the people and is its chief executive officer. While the County Board of Commissioners doesn’t control the office, the budget for the Sheriff’s Office is set by them.
There are many operational differences between a sheriff’s office and a police department. The sheriff provides county-wide services: maintaining a jail used by all county law enforcement agencies; providing security in courtrooms; serving civil court processes (lawsuit documents); enforcing court orders; issuing concealed handgun licenses; maintaining warrants; providing forensic science; and supervising the Elder Safe program and Project Lifesaver (electronic tracking system for Alzheimer’s, Autistic, and other mentally challenged patients), among other functions not found in a police department. In the Cedar Mill community, when you call 9-1-1, normally a deputy sheriff will respond to answer your concerns.
In addition to the normal level of county service, voters in the urban unincorporated areas (UUA) of the county approved funding for the Enhanced Sheriff’s Patrol District (ESPD), so we pay additional property taxes to provide law enforcement services required by urban populations. In 2002, 2008 and again in 2012 voters approved five-year local option levies for the ESPD. There are differences between rural and urban policing. Factors include population and deputies per thousand (about .5 per thousand in rural areas compared to about 1 per thousand in urban ESPD areas).
 Your Sheriff’s primary patrol resources are assigned to specific geographic areas throughout the county. In Cedar Mill, there are normally about three deputies on patrol, plus corporals and sergeants assigned to serve a broader area. This is in addition to services that are provided countywide, such as Traffic Safety Unit patrols and missions, gang enforcement, canine team responses, crime prevention, jail operations, and many others.
At times, city (Beaverton, Hillsboro) police officers may provide backup policing services as requested, just as deputies provide back up to city officers. The Beaverton Police Department has jurisdiction in some areas within and surrounding Cedar Mill, generally on segments of roadways that the city has annexed, so it is not uncommon for officers to initiate traffic or subject stops in these areas. Sheriff’s deputies also perform a high number of the same activities inside Beaverton city limits. This is due to the fact that ESPD patrol districts border the city of Beaverton. Accordingly, deputies frequently pass through the city in the course of their daily activities.
 While Cedar Mill is not a high crime area, the deputies assigned to this area are working hard. To give you an idea, during 2012, deputies wrote 3312 reports, responded to 13,571 calls from dispatch, and self-initiated 22,940 calls (generally violations or crimes in progress that they observed) within the boundaries of CPO 1.
There are two main things citizens can do to reduce crime—secure your belongings and report suspicious activity. After all, over the past five years, 60% of residential burglaries in our area were committed without the need to force entry.
To view the PDF file of the March 2013 presentation, visit cpo1friends.org/index.html#past
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