Tag: Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office

Portland, Ore. – The most populated county in Oregon also has the highest rates of property crime. But Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez hopes a new multi-agency burglary task force will work to bring that number down through a collaborative and data-driven approach. “This is going to be a regional partnership that’s going to bring together the law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and investigative specialists and will be working, dedicated, with businesses that are affected by this issue,” Vasquez told reporters Wednesday, adding small businesses are most often the targets, “This isn’t just the financial losses, which are important. There’s really a huge emotional and operational toll that is taken on these businesses when they have to come in in the morning and see that their front window is smashed out, their merchandise is gone.”

Portland Police, Gresham Police, Port of Portland Police and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office will all assign detectives to the task force, along with prosecutors from the DA’s office. “This is a dedicated group of individuals that will be routinely getting together,” says Vasquez, “One agency will bring in a case, and then another agency will say, ‘hey; I have something similar.’ So we’ll be doing that cross-jurisdictional work.”

Portland Police Chief Bob Day says he’s assigning a sergeant and three investigators, “It’s not lost on me that Portland has the lion’s share of that. That’s why we’re coming into this committed with the resources that we have.” The task force is modeled after recent efforts to crack down on both retail and car theft through sharing data and information.

Vasquez acknowledges burglary rates have come down over the past year in most of those jurisdictions, but says it’s not happening fast enough, “Our property crime rates, quite frankly, put us at a rate that I don’t think anyone is happy with, which is we are sometimes listed in the bottom.”