Last week I asked one question: do you feel safe in downtown Salem? 575 of you answered.

"I avoid downtown altogether" was the single most common answer, 29%. "Safe during the day, not at night" was close behind at 28%. Add in "rarely feel safe" and three out of four of you told me you don't feel fully safe downtown.

The comments told a more specific story than the numbers alone. Encampments, public drug use, and waste were the most repeated concerns by far. But how unsafe people felt depended heavily on who they are. A wheelchair user, a woman who walks with a cane, parents with young kids, all described real fear and concrete workarounds: parking closer, never going alone, skipping it altogether. 

A 45-year-old man who's gone downtown multiple times a week for 20 years said he's never once felt unsafe, and added that he knows his experience is different than other people's. A few business owners described a harder version of all of it: daily cleanup, money spent on prevention, customers who won't come back.

Not everyone agreed downtown has gotten worse. Several of you pushed back directly, arguing that people avoiding downtown is part of what's hollowing it out, that the unhoused aren't inherently a threat, and that emptied-out state office buildings have done as much damage as anything else.

Earlier today I spent an hour talking with Interim Police Chief Brandon Ditto.

He told me he reads the online comments more than he should, the same kind you've been leaving me. He's not avoiding the criticism. He's choosing to sit with it. He's also spent two decades at Salem PD, the only department he's worked for, and was assistant chief, second in command, before stepping into this interim role.

I asked him how he wants officers should treat Salem's unhoused population and he skips the policy talk. He reaches for an analogy.

"It's a balance of compassion and accountability," he said. Most of that population is living through addiction, mental illness, financial collapse. The real harm comes from a smaller group preying on the rest.

He compared an unmanaged encampment to domestic violence: "Is someone gonna leave that relationship when the bad actor is still intimidating them and still in the house?" 

Sometimes, he said, an arrest is what gives someone room to leave. Uncomfortable. But it explains why his department targets specific people instead of sweeping everyone.

Short answer, yes.

"Of the eight largest, we're the lowest staffed, and we have the second highest rate of violent crime,” Ditto told me.

Salem has 1.1 officers per thousand residents, compared to a West Coast standard of 1.5.

I checked these numbers and found Salem Reporter's analysis of city and FBI data confirms it: lowest staffed of Oregon's eight biggest cities, second highest violent crime rate, behind only Portland. The 1.5 target isn't informal. It's the city's own goal, set in 2021, but not met in two decades.

Ditto told me vacancies at the Salem Police Department have improved recently. "We were down as low as 26 at one point. Now we have nine in the background, hoping to hire by the end of August." 

Their last recruiting round brought in over 100 applicants. It’s the most they’ve seen since 2020.

"A lot of them are folks from the area, and they're very service oriented," Ditto said. "We get a lot of former military, people just out of college, people from the service industries. They're all heavily focused on the safety of the community because they're so invested here."

Mayor Julie Hoy sent me this in a text message, "Hiring challenges…not limited to police. Attrition is a thing. We definitely need more help."

Two new Homeless Services Team officers brought coverage to seven days a week, up from three or four. "Wallace Marine Park looks entirely different today than it did even six months ago." 

Daily presence beats sporadic check-ins, he said. Unsafe structures cleared from encampments are up 80%. And the number of people connected to housing or support services roughly doubled.

Many of Salem's unmanaged encampments sit on ODOT property, where Salem PD can't enforce trespassing. "We don't specifically enforce trespassing on ODOT properties. We're building a relationship with ODOT right now."

Salem has more state-owned land running through it than most Oregon cities, he said. Right now, cleanup on that land falls almost entirely to state crews stretched thin across Oregon, and Ditto pointed to ODOT's own funding shortfall as part of the strain. What he's asking for is consistent response, and a partnership where Salem acts as the state's agent on the ground.

Here's the question I came for. Is downtown actually less safe, or does it just feel that way?

"The reality is that crime has slowly decreased in downtown Salem," he said. "Some people will say there was reporting fatigue, that people aren't reporting crimes. That may be true. But at the rates we're seeing, there's probably a little bit of both. People probably aren't reporting as much, that's a pretty consistent dynamic we've seen throughout the country. But also, crime is objectively going down a bit.” He continued, "Do I feel unsafe going downtown? No. Do I understand that others do? Absolutely."

Not expecting any of this to change how you personally feel about safety in Salem, but hopefully it helps provide some context into what is happening behind the scenes.

The reputation of downtown is so damaged right now, that it'll take a lot more than an interview with a police chief to change that.

About the author:

My name is Jacob Espinoza. I was born in raised in Salem, Oregon. In my twenties I was a rapper. Now I make content on social media and write this newsletter for a living. Thanks for reading!

This edition was not sponsored, but if you’d like to support a future edition click here!