Commentary

Back on June 28, a man picked up a 3-year-old boy at a playground in northeast Salem and tried to leave with him. The boy’s father got his son back, and police arrested the man nearby. On November 6, Lino Alfonso Lopez-Palafox pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted kidnapping and received 30 days in jail and three years of supervised probation, KOIN reported.

A month in jail for trying to take somebody’s toddler. I’m having a hard time getting past that, and I don’t think parents should have to explain why. It’s the kind of sentence that makes me wonder what justice in Oregon is even supposed to mean anymore.

His dad had to get him back

Two days after the arrest, Salem Reporter’s Madeleine Moore reported on the case using an affidavit from Salem police officer Amy Lull. The father told police he was at the Cornerstone Apartments playground on Rose Garden Street NE with his two kids when Lopez-Palafox tried to take his 10-year-old daughter’s bike. When Dad said no, the man demanded his phone instead. The father refused again. That’s when, according to his account, Lopez-Palafox picked up his 3-year-old son and started walking away.

The father followed him and got his boy back, Lull wrote. Lopez-Palafox ran off, and the father called 911. Salem police said officers found him nearby. The family told police they’d never met him.

That father had to intervene to keep his son from being taken. I can’t get comfortable with a month-long jail sentence just because he managed to stop it. The danger to that child was real, even though the man didn’t get away with him.

Thirty days is hard to stomach

Marion County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Mart imposed the sentence, according to KOIN’s review of court records. The probation terms bar Lopez-Palafox from contacting the family or returning to the area. He had also been jailed after his June arrest and was released in August after posting $4,000.

So he spent time in custody before this sentence, too. Knowing that still doesn’t make the outcome sit right with me. Someone tried to take a 3-year-old, and I’m supposed to look at this sentence and believe the court took it seriously enough.

KOIN’s report doesn’t explain the judge’s reasoning or what sentence prosecutors requested. I’d like to hear both. Whoever argued that this was enough should be able to explain it to the family whose child was picked up and carried away.

This also wasn’t his first criminal case in the county. Salem Reporter counted eight Marion County criminal cases since 2011, including this one, using state court records. The report didn’t give the earlier outcomes, so we don’t know how many resulted in convictions or how that history affected his sentence.

I’ve seen Oregon’s revolving door

I’ve seen it plenty of times here in Oregon: somebody does a short stretch, gets out and commits another crime. Generally speaking, its more often than not the same crime. That’s what I mean by a revolving door. When I hear that a man who tried to take a little boy got a month in jail, what I want to know is what happens on day 31. Who’s making sure he stays away from that family and that playground?

The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission followed two groups for three years. Of the people who started probation from July through December 2022, 35.6% were convicted of another misdemeanor or felony within those three years. For people released onto parole or post-prison supervision over the same six months, it was 36%. In both groups, that’s more than one person in three with a new conviction.

Those numbers tell us how often people came back to court and were convicted again. They can’t tell us whether a longer sentence would’ve prevented the next crime, or what Lopez-Palafox will do. What bothers me is how easily “three years of supervision” rolls off the tongue when families have good reason to ask how well that supervision works.

Take drug testing, a separate issue for people coming out of prison on parole. Under Oregon’s parole rules, a history of substance abuse can mean a person has to take drug tests and, if directed, get evaluated and follow the recommendations. The rules don’t promise anyone a pass for admitting drug use before a urine test. Officials can keep somebody on supervision with new conditions after a violation or send them back to custody. That choice is exactly where I want accountability: if the response is treatment, who follows up to see whether the person actually goes?

Parents have enough to worry about

Oregon’s trafficking numbers are another reason to be angry about people who prey on others. The National Human Trafficking Hotline’s 2025 Oregon data lists 197 reported trafficking situations involving 236 potential victims. Of those situations, 101 involved sex trafficking and 22 involved both sex and labor trafficking. This data of course, is based on only what has actually been reported.

There’s no trafficking connection to this Salem case in the reporting we reviewed. The attempted kidnapping is plenty horrifying on its own.

I’m tired of looking at outcomes like this and trying to find a way to make them sound reasonable. To me, this is a sentence that makes Oregon’s justice system look broken. I worry it tells someone willing to hurt a family that the consequences are manageable, while the family has to live with what happened.

A dad should be able to take his kids to a park without having to pull his toddler away from a stranger. When that happens anyway, he ought to be able to count on the courts to treat it with the seriousness it deserves. I don’t see how this sentence does that.