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By Shaun Hall Grants Pass Daily Courier November 15. 2014 2:03PM Full jail, miscommunication, sends suspect to Douglas County When 21-year-old Luke J. Beam was caught after a three-minute foot chase Wednesday night in Josephine County, he should have gone to jail. He did — in Douglas County. A jail full to capacity in Grants Pass and a miscommunication between agencies, Josephine County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson said, figured into the unusual scene of an Oregon State Police trooper driving to the Glendale area to hand Beam off to a Douglas County trooper. That trooper then took Beam to jail in Roseburg. Asked why a suspected car thief wanted on felony warrants would not be jailed locally, Gilbertson said his jail was full and that his staffers didn't know the full extent of charges facing Beam. If not for OSP's extraordinary efforts, Beam would have been cited and released. "There was a breakdown in communications," Gilbertson said Thursday. OSP Sgt. Tyler Lee, who supervises troopers in Josephine County, did not return a call for comment for this story. Neither did Lt. Kelly Collins, the OSP commander in Southwest Oregon. It was the second such miscue in two months between OSP and the Sheriff's Office, counting an incident on Sept. 15 in which the jail declined to lodge an 18-year-old man accused of shooting at a van in Merlin containing two young children. State troopers had been on the lookout for Beam since Halloween, when he was allegedly involved in a vehicle chase involving a stolen car near Wolf Creek, a rural community located in the north part of Josephine County about 20 miles from the county seat of Grants Pass. The vehicle broke down and the driver escaped on foot. At that time Beam had two outstanding theft and burglary warrants for his arrest in Douglas County. Fast forward to Wednesday night, when Trooper Brendan Quirke chased down Beam after he allegedly ran from a car, again, during a traffic stop in Wolf Creek, again. That's when the trouble started. "The Josephine County Jail was contacted, advised that the suspect had charges of UUMV (vehicle theft), felony elude (in a vehicle), two counts of misdemeanor elude (on foot) as well as the two felony warrants, and they refused to lodge the suspect," the trooper stated in his report. An OSP dispatcher told the trooper in the field that the jail had refused to take Beam. After Quirke confirmed with the dispatcher that the jail knew of all the charges, he cited Beam and drove him to the county line to hand him off. When Gilbertson initially was contacted on Thursday, he said he didn't know all of the details, but that Beam's charges as known to the jail "didn't fit the criteria" to be lodged. He also said the jail was full. Capacity at the 262-bed jail is 130 inmates, due to chronic manpower shortages related to lack of funding. "We were capped out," the sheriff said. "We've told OSP, if they have something that is extenuating circumstances, we will make exceptions. "We're maxed out most of the time," the sheriff continued. "We've only got so many beds. We're limited due to personnel. We want to take everybody. We're absolutely limited by the resources we have available. "Being capped out," he said, "we have to really scrutinize any additional people we bring in. If somebody gets hurt, who gets sued? We do." Contacted a few hours later, Gilbertson then said that OSP didn't inform the jail of all the charges facing Beam. "There's a breakdown in communications," he said. "They did not tell us what they had." The sheriff added that he was reluctant to fault OSP, which provides the bulk of patrol services in rural Josephine County. "I don't want to poke OSP in the eye, because they're doing our job," he said. http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20141115/NEWS/141119717 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->