4,618 square miles. 103,452 people. 5 deputies.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

A .45-caliber pistol in her holster, an AR-15 rifle and a shotgun at her side, Adam 6-2 wheels a Ford patrol car through a drive-up coffee stand to kick off another swing shift for the Lane County Sheriff's Office.

Adam 6-2 - that's the radio moniker for deputy Chris Jacobson - is ready for anything.

She has to be.

Before she wraps up an eight-hour shift at 11 p.m., she will deliver an anti-stalking order to a rural enclave that houses a convicted meth cook on parole from prison.

She will meet a runaway girl who claims that her mother abuses her.

She will crawl through the upstairs window of a duplex to deal with a man so drunk he can't care for his year-old child.

She will quiet down a small but rowdy party.

She will write a crime report for a burglary victim who will never see a detective on the case.

She will try to resolve a dispute between two horse owners over some tack worth maybe $200.

She will pronounce it "a fairly average night" on the swing shift.

But there is more.

There is frustration over calls for help that go unanswered as five patrol cars try to cover 4,618 square miles of unincorporated Lane County, where 103,452 people live. In total, the sheriff has 18 patrol deputies providing 24-hour coverage, seven days a week.

The county's overcrowded jail is the most high-profile image of the sheriff's budget shortfall. But it's not the only one.

Jacobson says the sheriff's patrol staff has been so overwhelmed for so long that she no longer has any hope it will ever change.

She is not surprised that Eugene officials recently shot down a proposal by the county to consider forming a new taxing district to boost public safety in rural areas.

Even though Jacobson has no plans to leave her post, she admits sometimes having second thoughts about her 18-year career in Lane County law enforcement.

"We're like a tiny, small-town police department in a heavily populated area. If I had known 18 years ago that I'd be working with only four people on patrol on a swing shift, I probably wouldn't have come here. I probably would have gone somewhere else. The job would have been far more satisfying," she says.

So much time gets spent reacting to the antics of dysfunctional families, drug addicts and drunks that none is left to go after criminals, she says. So few deputies are on patrol that they can't go far beyond the narrow rural corridor around Interstate 5.

"The fun part about being a cop is going out and finding bad guys," Jacobson says. "We don't do that. There is no pro-active work we get to do."

There is just no time.

For their work, deputies earn what for Lane County is a reasonably solid salary: $34,800 to $62,400 a year, assuming a 40-hour workweek, depending on experience and training.

Patrol staffing has remained the same the past three years, while budget cuts have eliminated resident deputies in rural communities and deputies working on the interagency drug team and the metro SWAT team.

When sick leave, injuries, training, court cases and vacation are factored in, each patrol shift averages two to three deputies, Lane County Sheriff Russ Burger says.

"The net result is that we can't respond to everything, and we rely heavily on traffic team units to back up main office patrol," Burger says. "We have done what we can by cutting elsewhere to keep main office patrol at what amounts to a minimum but unacceptable level."

The number of serious crimes reported increased 17 percent in the first four months of this year, compared with the same period last year. The number of calls for less serious problems rose 12 percent in the same period, according to sheriff's department data.

Those are only the crimes that get reported, says Sgt. Cliff Harrold, who supervises Jacobson and three other deputies on the swing shift on this particular Thursday. Criminals are well aware of how thin the patrols are. Citizens seem to be catching on, too, he says.

Harrold often returns calls to citizens to explain why no deputy is available to investigate a stolen car, a burglary, suspicious circumstances or non-life-threatening crimes.

"There are areas of the county that have stopped calling us for certain things," he says. Citizens often call about car break-ins and thefts one or two weeks after they happen, only so they can get a police report to support their insurance claim, he says.

High-tech patrol

The swing shift starts at 3 p.m., with a briefing. Deputies are alerted to dangers, such as violent suspects who may be driving in the area. They also hear about new laws and department procedures.

The swing shift is "fat" on this day, with one more patrol car than average - a total of five, counting Harrold.

As they fan out to pick up where the day shift left off, each deputy views a "call screen" on his patrol car laptop. It will typically show 15 pending calls for service. Some calls are hours or even days old, depending on the priority of the situation.

The laptops, a recent addition to the sheriff's patrol, put a lot of information at the deputies' fingertips.

Deputies can dial up state and national databases to check someone's criminal or driving record. They can download photos of suspects. They get much more detail than they could over the radio about calls they respond to. They can check maps while driving to a scene. They can see which calls are pending and which deputy is covering which call.

When someone calls the sheriff's office, a dispatcher takes the call, assigns it a priority based on risk to people and whether suspects are on the scene, and then assigns a deputy to respond or puts it on the waiting list.

Harrold, as watch commander, can override the dispatch priority and reassign deputies as he sees fit.

Throughout the shift, he drives among his deputies as their backup on dangerous calls: fights, domestic violence, crimes in progress, 911 hang-ups or calls to familiar places involving violent offenders.

"I just have to make those judgments based on the information and what my gut tells me," Harrold says. `Where we really run into trouble is when we have four priority calls and not enough deputies to go to them. It just gets to be an overwhelming feeling. The city police departments are really good at helping us out (on emergency calls close to the cities).'

Relying on backup

It's dangerous for a deputy to go solo to high-risk calls.

The county's hills, valleys and forests create pockets where cell phones and radios don't work. Not far from Eugene, on the far side of Bailey Hill, is one such place. A deputy there cannot summon help if a call goes bad.

For that reason, Adam 6-2 arranges to meet at a rural church to join two other deputies to deliver an anti-stalking order to a Bailey Hill address they'd visited many times. It's a hodgepodge of mossy-roofed structures and wrecked cars, among trees behind a fence posted "no trespassing."

Arriving together, armed and in uniform, the trio intends to discourage any violent reaction - particularly from the paroled meth cook who once attacked a deputy.

Within minutes the order is handed to the residents, and a man and his grandson are shouting at each other across the driveway. The deputies wait for them to quiet down before leaving.

One hour and four minutes after leaving their downtown Eugene headquarters, the deputies are on their way to their next calls.

Scanning her laptop call screen, Adam 6-2 sees pending reports of two stolen cars, two burglaries and two "suspicious conditions." One swing shift deputy is taking someone to jail after discovering during a traffic stop that the driver is wanted on another charge.

Driving back from the Bailey Hill call, Adam 6-2 is assigned to check a report of child abuse at a River Road-area children's shelter. She arrives 23 minutes later, but the child is not there. Adam 6-2 radios the dispatch center that she is ready for another call.

She is then assigned to phone a burglary victim who called more than three hours earlier. She drives to a spot on River Road where she can watch traffic and make the call.

Nine minutes later she hangs up and begins writing a report. Jacobson calls it "a quick little one-pager."

But she doesn't get it finished before the dispatcher sends her back to the children's shelter, where the 13-year-old girl has returned. In the meantime, the child's mother is hysterical and has called the sheriff to report her daughter missing, the dispatcher says.

An hour later Jacobson finishes her talk with the teen and gets on the phone with Harrold, looking for advice.

The girl's plight is "relatively minor," she tells Harrold. No injuries. Just allegations that add up to a feud between a girl and her mother. But the girl has a friend at school whose mother will take her in for the night. No law authorizes Jacobson to take the missing teen home.

Harrold passes along the phone number of the on-call state child protection worker. Jacobson calls him with the story, then calls the missing teen's mother. The mother is crying and incredulous over her daughter's allegations. Jacobson, in a practiced unemotional tone, explains the situation and gives the woman the number to call in the morning.

This report will be more than a one-pager, so Jacobson drives to the sheriff's shop on North Delta Highway to use a desktop computer. It's a more central location, with quicker access to highways than downtown headquarters, she says.

It turns out to be a good choice.

Less than 30 minutes later, Adam 6-2 is dispatched to a dispute between two men, one of them drunk, involving a 1-year-old infant. Driving 75 mph along Belt Line Road, Jacobson exits on River Road and is at the scene in six minutes.

Family matters

There, a 17-year-old tells her he is locked out of the duplex where he lives, his mother's boyfriend is drunk inside alone with his 1-year-old half sister, and he is worried for the child's safety.

He says his mother left the duplex after a fight with the boyfriend. He adds that police have been called so often to their home that the landlord is evicting the family. A "For Rent" sign pokes from the front yard.

Harrold, who is backing up Jacobson on this call, says no law is being broken, but deputies can't leave without ensuring that the infant is safe. But it's a stalemate because the occupant refuses to answer the door.

After several minutes of knocking and calling out, Jacobson notices an open upstairs window over the garage roof. The neighbors allow her to get on the roof from their side of the duplex.

Standing on the roof, Jacobson draws a multi-tool from her duty belt and quickly removes the screen and a box fan from the window. The intoxicated occupant enters the upstairs room carrying the infant and carelessly bumps the child's head on the door frame as Jacobson talks with the man.

The incident winds down 13 minutes later when the infant's grandmother arrives to take custody of the child and her teenage half brother. The intoxicated man staggers from the duplex to kiss his infant daughter goodbye after she is strapped in a child seat inside the grandmother's van.

"That was interesting," Jacobson says as she walks back to her patrol car.

The call consumes more than an hour, and her laptop now shows 11 pending calls.

Among them are: an assault, a hit-and-run vehicle crash, a suicidal person near Florence, an interrupted 911 call from the Creswell area, a burglary report on the coast that has been waiting 3 1/2 hours for a response, two reports of criminal mischief, a report from a man who claims his estranged wife has just stolen two marijuana plants that she had hidden in their backyard, and a man who has been waiting to turn himself in for violating a restraining order.

At the same moment, the laptop screen shows that Eugene police have 21 patrol cars on the road and Springfield has 11. Neither city police agency has a backlog of calls waiting at the moment.

"We can't even pick up the people who want to turn themselves in," Jacobson remarks, noting that her shift has four deputies, one sergeant and two traffic safety cars for backup.

Because the suicidal person is a priority, the deputy who works under contract for the city of Florence is called back to duty, according to the computer. It's 8:30 p.m. and the deputy must be back to work at 7 a.m. Before the night is over, he will have worked a 15-hour day.

Searching for stress

All the patrol deputies have been there. When priority calls come late in the shift, there is no choice.

Burnout among deputies is a growing concern for department commanders, Harrold says.

It is among the factors that he weighs when deciding what work to leave undone on each swing shift.

When he gives the briefing to start the shift, when he pulls up alongside a deputy for a face-to-face talk, when he decides it's time for each to roll in to headquarters to finish reports, Harrold is looking for stress. He watches how the deputies answer when he asks how they're doing.

He knows that statistics show that police are six times more likely than civilians to die of heart failure in their 60s. It has a lot to do with what happens when a person's body repeatedly goes from zero to 100 in emergencies that are routine for cops, he says.

There are emotional symptoms, too - a tendency to withdraw - that can strain a marriage.

Harrold, who is 31 and grew up on his family's dairy farm outside Creswell, encourages deputies to think about what they can do to beat the odds. Many of the deputies he now supervises - including Jacobson - used to take him along on patrol when he was a 16-year-old Explorer Scout interested in law enforcement.

"I basically grew up with the people I'm working with," he says.

Deputies appreciate the consideration, says Jacobson, who lives on a 5-acre blueberry farm and owns a horse. Water sports take her mind off the work. She recently took up surfing.

Jacobson, 45, says she won't leave the department.

"It's a family. It really is," she says. "We have some really good people, and we get along really well. It really makes you proud. You see these high school kids, they grow up and have kids, and they're really good cops."

But there is no end to the work. In the first four months of this year, the sheriff's office received almost 30,000 calls for service of all kinds, all levels of priority.

Some of the calls are like the squabble between two former friends over some tack that one of them allegedly borrowed and didn't return. It's trivial to all but those involved.

But Jacobson, whose father was an Oregon state trooper, sees it in the context of public service. She notes they pay taxes for sheriff's patrols just like county residents who live near the cities - where most of the patrol must be concentrated for the sake of efficiency and officer safety.

"The people in the rest of the county only see us on a hot call or passing through on our way to a hot call. It's not fair. It's the way it is," Jacobson says. "You can sometimes resolve cases to the satisfaction of people who are calling it in."

Jacobson phones the horse owners and gets differing stories about the tack. She advises the alleged victim that there's nothing to be done about it because the district attorney doesn't prosecute simple criminal mischief cases anymore.

Seven minutes later Adam 6-2 is speeding down River Road again, toward a report of a loud argument involving a man and a woman. Her backup car gets there first. She parks away from the house and joins the other deputy.

Loud voices are heard inside as the deputies approach the door.

In this case, it's not a volatile husband-wife fight, but a party of four inebriated people who willingly quiet down. Within minutes, Jacobson is back in her patrol car, weighing options. Calls are pending. Overtime already is imminent because she is supposed to finish her reports before going home.

Adam 6-2 is allowed to return to headquarters at 9:52 p.m. to write it all up.

"That call screen will always be there," she says.

CAPTION(S):

Lane County Sheriff's Sgt. Cliff Harrold checks his log of calls waiting for a response on his laptop before hitting the streets. On this night, his four deputies have 12 calls waiting at the beginning of their eight-hour shift.