SALEM, Ore. — A call for help, from Salem’s Police Chief. Trevor Womack told the Salem city council:
“Out of Oregon’s 8 largest cities we’re at the bottom for the staffing ratio officers per thousand people . When it comes to violent crime in Oregon, we have the second highest rate only behind Portland. Independent analysis shows we need somewhere around 60 more police officers. That’s a huge number. I don’t expect we’re gonna get 60 police officers here in Salem, but that’s just the outside analysis that we had.”
Too many violent crimes, and not enough police to respond to them. Womack described the problem. “We have an extremely high violent crime rate compared to Oregon but a very low staffing ratio. ”…