QuickTake:

The 2025 statistics from the Eugene Police Department also showed a sharp increase in the enforcement of trespassing laws, Chief Chris Skinner said.

Crime data for 2025 released by Eugene police showed a rise in injury assaults while home burglaries dropped by a third compared to the previous year.

Last year also saw a sharp rise in citations and arrests by Eugene police, partly explained by an emphasis on enforcing trespassing laws, Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner said.

This year, “we will continue to focus on that,” Skinner said of the crackdown on trespassing. Arrests and citations for trespassing increased by more than 1,000 last year compared to 2024.

“That’s still the number one call for service that we’re seeing in this community every single day. And so as a strategist, we have to pay attention to what our number one call for service is,” Skinner said in a news conference at the Eugene Police Department headquarters Thursday, Feb. 19.

Skinner also said community perception is important. In July, for example, citizens expressed concerns about safety downtown during public comment at a Eugene City Council meeting, sharing personal stories of feeling unsafe.

“What I’m here to tell you is, statistically, there’s nothing to support the fact that our downtown is any less safe than other areas of our city,” Skinner said. “But I understand that from people’s perspective, that they could feel unsafe downtown based on what they see or perceive as going on downtown.”

Violent crimes

The city’s 370 aggravated assaults were an increase of 12.8% compared to a year earlier.

Skinner said the crime category can best be understood as including assaults with injury, “anything from a punch to the nose at two in the morning after leaving a bar, all the way to some of our most serious” assaults.

Skinner, Eugene’s police chief since April 2018, said more analysis must be done to understand whether the increase can best be explained by a rise in domestic violence or perhaps late-night assaults occurring “in an area where maybe alcohol is being consumed,” for example.

“We want to do that analysis so that we can better see where we can insert ourselves to prevent those things, or work with community partners on maybe how we deal with those,” Skinner said.

An example of working with the community would be working with business owners in a bar or entertainment district to make sure customers aren’t overserved, he said.

The uptick in aggravated assaults last year followed three consecutive years of declines, according to police data. The 370 aggravated assaults were the highest since 2022, when 370 aggravated assaults also were recorded.

Data reported for the city’s murders, or willful homicides, shows how the collection process can miss high-profile crimes. The new data on willful homicides reports there were two — same as the previous year.

But the 2025 total excludes an unhoused man, Douglas Eugene Beinhauer, who died 10 days after being assaulted downtown.

Police arrested a suspect on a charge of first-degree assault, and the incident-based reporting system typically classifies crime based on the charge at the time of arrest, police spokesperson Melinda McLaughlin said. But because Beinhauer later died, the suspect now faces a charge of second-degree murder.

Similarly, the shooting death of Justin Garrett Huser isn’t counted as a homicide because the suspect arrested was initially charged with unlawful use of a weapon. Only months later did a grand jury indict the suspect on a second-degree murder charge.

After three consecutive years of declines, reported rapes increased last year in Eugene. The 78 forcible rapes were the highest in the city since 2022, when police recorded 84.

Property crimes

The city recorded fewer than 300 residential burglaries for the first time since at least 2014, the first year Eugene police switched to the incident-based system for recording crimes.

“Residential burglary, down 33.6%, and business burglary over this last year, down 30%. Those are really good numbers, and that’s the trajectory we want to see,” Skinner said.

Most categories of theft also fell, including car thefts, which dropped to 388 from 588 a year earlier.

Skinner previously championed the use of automated license-plate recognition technology, known as ALPR, and has said the pole-mounted cameras helped find stolen vehicles. 

Installations began in May but police paused use of the technology amid public outcry in October. Eugene police in December announced a severing of ties with technology provider Flock Safety.

During the “short period of time” when the cameras were activated, “we saw our motor vehicle thefts plummet and our recovery rates go through the roof, and we’ll see what the future holds with that technology,” Skinner said.

But he later said, “right now, I don’t have any plans for ALPR to come back to the city of Eugene.”

Thefts also declined across several categories, with Eugene police recording the lowest number of thefts from a motor vehicle since 2014, when the city launched its incident-based reporting data collection. One exception: shoplifting, which increased by only 2% last year but with 1,168 incidents reached a high for the Eugene police department’s era of incident-based data reporting.

Police responded to fewer calls for service last year compared to recent years, but Skinner said “we know that crime is underreported.”

Still, the call totals have some meaning, he said.

“There’s a bunch of variables there, but it is an indicator of our system usage,” Skinner said, also noting that citizens can use the police department’s online reporting tool.

The increase in arrests and citations — up to 9,323 last year compared to 7,019 a year earlier — included a 78% rise in drug law violations. The state’s legislative rollback of Measure 110 took effect Sept. 1, 2024, ending a period of decriminalization for possession of small amounts of drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine.

“I’ve asked my officers to enforce that, and they have done a great job,” Skinner said.

Skinner also referred to the countywide deflection program, begun late in 2024. People facing low-level drug charges can take part in treatment programs to avoid court.

“We’re deflecting where we see appropriate, and in other cases, we’re not,” Skinner said. 

He added: “I love having the off-ramp of deflection, because some of those cases, not all of them, some of those cases are lower-level enough cases that deflection makes more sense for those people than taking them to jail and hoping that they get the treatment.”