“Trouble on the Outside, Trouble on the Inside”: Growing Pains, Social Change, and Small Town Policing—The Eugene Police Department, 1862-1932

Abstract

This article examines a century of policing in Eugene, Oregon, from 1862 to 1932. Its central argument is that the city's early civic leaders and law enforcement officers were concerned with preserving the status quo and image of the city by restricting the entrance of the “dangerous class.” As the city expanded, however, and the police department grew to meet the demands of the changing city, the department increasingly suffered the same problems it had been designed to stop. Although the department's ability to successfully address crime and the city's targeted concerns fluctuated over time, the problems within the force remained. Eugene's law enforcement history, as a result, both substantiates the larger patterns in American law enforcement history and deviates from that pattern in unique ways