When a city spans two counties, the report has two audiences

What I found when we looked closer

Albany is the Linn County seat and Oregon's 11th-largest city, at the meeting of the Calapooia and Willamette rivers. City limits cross into both Linn and Benton counties, between Corvallis and Salem along the I-5 corridor.

Cases can end up in front of two county justice systems, and the city has grown from 40,852 residents in 2000 to 56,472 in 2020. Both raise the documentation load on the department.

In their words

Following one report through the building

The first thing we do with a new department is trace where a report goes after the officer hits submit. Here, it passes through 4 hands:

1. 1Patrol officer
2. 2Sergeant
3. 3Detectives
4. 4Linn or Benton County district attorney

Every one of those readers needs the same facts from the first draft. That is what shaped what we built.

What we built for them

What we're watching

These are the signals that will tell us whether it's working here:

• Cases accepted by prosecutors without a rewrite
• Detective time to locate key statements
• Same-shift report completion

Figures on this page come from the department's own published materials. We only publish Code Four results after the department reviews them.