EDITOR’S NOTE: This press release from Lincoln County gives a comparison of District Attorney offices, crime rates in neighboring communities, including Tillamook anc Clatsop County.
The Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office has more staff positions than one county that has more than three times the number of crimes reported, according to records compiled from all law enforcement agencies in the state by the Oregon State Police, and other counties that see significantly more reported crimes have as many as 10 fewer staff positions in their prosecutors’ offices.
The Lincoln County District Attorney has in recent months highlighted a comparison between her jurisdiction and Benton County, saying that despite Benton’s population of nearly double Lincoln’s, her office filed almost as many criminal cases in 2025 – 1,689 compared to 1,666, according to the Lincoln County District Attorney. The Benton County District Attorney’s Office, serving a resident population of 96,303, has 29 staff positions that support prosecutions, which includes support staff and crime victim staff. The Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office has 27 budgeted staff positions, not including four positions that are currently frozen, which would bring the total to 31. Lincoln county’s population is 50,964.
Meanwhile, an Oregon State Police-maintained dashboard shows that, while the Lincoln County DA reports that Lincoln County filed a comparable number of cases with the courts, Benton County saw more than three times the number of crimes reported as Lincoln County during 2025 – 10,702 compared to 2,992. District attorneys have discretion concerning which cases are filed in their jurisdictions. This raises the question of why the Lincoln County DA would elect to file charges for more than 55% of crimes reported, while Benton County filed approximately 16%.
2025 Crime Reports
Even smaller counties with higher numbers of crimes reported are not staffed as well as the Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office. Clatsop County, home to popular tourist destinations like Astoria and Seaside and with a resident population of 41,363, had 4,520 crimes reported during 2025. That district attorney’s office has 17.5 staff (this includes two a half victim assistance staff positions).
Coos County, with a population of 64,827, saw 6,791 crimes reported in 2025. Yet their district attorney’s office has just 15.5 staff positions. Klamath County has 70,247 residents and had about 2,000 more crime reports in 2025 than Lincoln County – 4,909 compared to 2,992. The Klamath County District Attorney’s Office has 17 staff positions.
The 2025 crime reports trend is also seen when looking at a five-year period of crime reports for the same counties.
Lincoln County Human Resources Director David Collier’s department looks at workforce staffing and works with departments and offices throughout the county on recruitment.
“The staffing numbers speak for themselves,” Collier said in relation to the DA’s office staffing levels. “There is no shortage of budgeted staff in our district attorney’s office. This can be seen in the staffing comparison with other Oregon counties based on the number of referrals they get from law enforcement. We have many challenges as a rural community in attracting employees throughout the county, particularly in our health and human services department, where we have numerous legally mandated services from mental health, public health, and developmental disabilities.”
Anyone can view crime report statistics on Oregon State Police’s Uniform Crime Reporting Data dashboard here: https://www.oregon.gov/osp/pages/uniform-crime-reporting-data.aspx. All of Lincoln County’s law enforcement agencies report to this system, including Lincoln City, Newport, Toledo, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, and OSP.
In general, Lincoln County has mirrored the state’s overall downtrend in reported crimes. Some of the larger metropolitan counties have had slight upticks, but the smaller jurisdictions overcome those statistics to create an overall decrease.