County's DIY solution to crime
In an apparent response to a run on assault rifles at gun stores, the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office has started leaving them on taxpayers' front yards.
After a standoff between the county's SWAT team and a White City man who had been firing shots in the air ended peacefully Saturday, the Sheriff's department left behind an M4 assault rifle on a front lawn in the neighborhood. (So much cooler than the orange leaf bags SLC leaves on my doorstep.)
My first guess was that the weapons distribution was just a part of the gun-lovin' Legislature's new program to encourage Neighborhood Watches to handle their own #%&! domestic problems — saving tax dollars and court time.
So I was surprised to hear Salt Lake County Sheriff's Deputy Levi Hughes explain:
It's a terrible mistake. . . . We're going to take every step possible so that this never happens again.
2 Comments:
Our law enforcement and criminal justice systems have become a pair of morasses. In our criminal justice system, we have implemented a business like any other business, an entity committed to growth and, for the few at the top, profit. This does not make our society safer. In fact, the societal costs may very well far outweigh the societal benefits. A few people are becoming wealth while many families are devastated by the effects of one member making a mistake which pulls them into a system designed not to rehabilitate but to retain. For the accused, there is no such thing as a presumption of innocence and the ill-will created is far reaching and pervasive.
I sincerely hope this particular snafu is a catalyst for all taxpayers to demand accountability from and investigation into the existing systems. Building more prisons is not the answer. We need to stand together as citizens and demand reform which will benefit our society. The systems we currently have simply aren't cutting it.
I'd love for the Legislature to bring this new neighborhood watch program to my community, but I live in Utah County and we've had the M4 and the S&W neighbor watch programs running for years. Just try prying it from my cold, dead fingers.
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