Rural Lane County residents face delayed burglary responses as deputies stretch thin

Tracy Sandahl came home on her lunch break last November and found her unincorporated Florence-area house burglarized, with the back door open, the front door forced open and her bedroom ransacked. Family heirlooms, jewelry, firearms, hunting equipment and other valuables worth thousands of dollars were gone, and none of it has been recovered.

The worst part, Sandahl said, came after she called 911. She was eventually told a deputy would not be coming to the house because the only deputy on duty was in Eugene. Sandahl waited days with the bedroom left undisturbed in case evidence could still be collected, but the delay became part of the loss. For rural residents outside city limits, the message was clear: even a serious burglary may not bring quick help.

Sandahl’s experience was not isolated. Other residents in unincorporated areas near Florence described burglaries in the past year in which deputies responded hours later, days later or not at all. Their frustration has spread beyond patrol response to the broader criminal justice system, including the Lane County District Attorney’s Office, which some residents считают not aggressive enough in pursuing cases after arrests are made.

Sheriff Carl Wilkerson said the problem is tied to geography and staffing. The Lane County Sheriff’s Office patrols roughly 4,554.1 square miles, from the Cascades to the Oregon coast, and serves about 119,000 people in unincorporated Lane County, along with search and rescue, jail responsibilities and court-related duties. The sheriff’s office says its Field Services Section handles emergency response in unincorporated areas and also includes patrol, two K-9 teams, criminal investigations and the resident deputy program.

County budget materials show how thin that coverage has become. County patrol was staffed with 30 deputy sheriffs in fiscal year 2024-25. In the sheriff’s fiscal year 2025-26 presentation, the office said it had lost 5 sworn full-time employees since 2024 and would lose 2 more in the current budget, for a net loss of 6 deputy sheriffs and a lieutenant. Local reporting has also said the office generally runs three deputies and one sergeant per shift, with each deputy driving about 100 miles while on duty.

The staffing squeeze sits on top of a deeper funding problem Lane County leaders say dates to the 1980s and early 1990s, when falling federal timber-harvest revenue and property-tax limits squeezed local government finances. Commissioners created the Public Safety Funding Task Force on October 17, 2023, and the panel later recommended long-term options including a payroll tax, saying it could provide sustainable public-safety funding.

Wilkerson, who was unanimously appointed sheriff on June 11, 2025, has said deputies have been leaving for better-paid agencies with smaller workloads. Even as deputies and partner agencies made arrests in Florence in March 2026 tied to multiple burglaries and thefts, rural residents outside the metro area are still left to judge the system by a simpler standard: whether anyone shows up when they call.