Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton and his family have a penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On three different occasions they have been shopping in area stores and witnessed shoplifters running out with stolen merchandise while store owners or managers did not call police.
The Tualatin Commercial Community Involvement Organization invited Barton and Clackamas County District Attorney John Wentworth to speak to retailers in the Bridgeport and Lake Oswego areas of Tualatin on Nov. 5 at Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue Station 39 to discuss their efforts to prevent both organized and petty retail theft and shoplifting.
Barton explained the retail owners and managers are afraid their employees might get hurt if they intervene in these situations or they fear prosecution because of bias. “Anyone can call the police, but people aren’t doing it,” he said. “We all have an obligation to take ownership of this situation. We need stores to report these crimes.”
A Tualatin business owner told the district attorneys that when school gets out, kids come swarming into his store. “It’s petty theft, it’s quick,” he said. “We’ve given the police video and don’t hear anything back. I have a ‘wall of shame’ and put their photos at the front of the store. When we put those photos up, sometimes people recognize them – usually teachers. I say, ‘Please call their parents and I will send them the video.’”
Wentworth noted that a lot of businesses’ video systems have proprietary software that is not compatible with law-enforcement software. “We need software that we can actually use and integrate with our software,” he said.
Washington County Deputy District Attorney Samantha Erwin, who accompanied Barton to the meeting, said, “Often videos get deleted, but as long as they exist, that’s the biggest thing. We can get a copy later on.”
She explained, “Once someone has been identified, it is very likely they have been involved in other crimes, and I get the documentation. If fewer crimes are reported, fewer resources are sent to that area, so more crime occurs. If we don’t know about something, there is nothing we can do about it. And several small crimes can be combined into one large one to be prosecuted.”
Wentworth added that “the state is invested in clamping down on organized theft and provides funds for stings.” He said that “crooks know they can get away with crime in Multnomah County, which has taken a hands-off approach to crime. We can only take action if someone throws us a pitch. Two of the safest counties in Oregon are Clackamas and Washington.”
Tualatin Chief of Police Greg Pickering noted that there is a lot of information sharing among the different agencies and counties, and he added, “The biggest thing for us is that we have to have these calls. We constantly look at the statistics and where crimes are occurring in the city. You’ve got to call us – that is what you pay us to do.”
Wentworth said he grew up in Clackamas County when Clackamas Town Center was a safe place to visit. “It hurts me to see the condition it’s in now,” he said. “It is one of the least-safe malls in the country. I would rather shop at Washington Square.”
Barton said it is frustrating to see the same criminals come through the system again and again and that the recidivism rate (the tendency of a convicted criminal to re-offend) can be lowered by incarceration. “If people knew they will be punished, they are less likely to do the crime,” he said.
And second, specialty courts can help. “A significant number of criminals have addiction issues, and these courts can address their underlying addiction,” he said. “They must appear in court before a judge and see a probation officer.
“When I think about the role of the DA’s office, the cases you see on the news are the high-profile ones. The ones that have a higher impact are the ones that never make the news. The package off the front porch and quality-of-life crimes have the biggest impact. We have plenty of tools to hold people accountable, but we need enough police officers.”
Barton thanked voters for passing Measure 34-346, the Washington County public safety levy, in the Nov. 4 general election that will fund full staffing of the Washington County Jail; mental health response teams; the investigation and prosecution of crimes such as child abuse, child pornography and drug trafficking; expand victim assistance and domestic-violence prevention programs; and add positions to the Sheriff’s Office, District Attorney’s Office and the community.
Barton’s final words were: “Report, report, report, and document, document, document.”
The Washington County non-emergency number is 503-629-0111, which should be used for non-urgent situations that still require law-enforcement assistance.
