The past week, The Chronicle had several stories I found of interest, two of them local.
The stories focused on bigfoot, an underwear-masked alleged thief and a candidate for governor who suddenly thinks crime is a problem.
First, bigfoot. I first heard this as a side story on a local radio show and was a bit skeptical. There have been other sightings, of course, and even footprints, which were later debunked. But this story had legs, thanks to maps and more than one person seeing it.
It was reported as probably legit by a group that investigates such things. But, finally, it was reported that it was just a couple of local runners who typically are in that area and are most likely the subjects seen running across a ridge in South Thurston County.
I can’t say I’m surprised by this, either the reporting of it or the fact it turns out to be mistaken. It isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last, I’m sure. But it continues to be interesting to me the amount of interest there is in bigfoot, and yet no one actually has caught one.
Along the same lines, there was a report allegedly called in to a sheriff’s office in Eastern Washington asking about the legality of hunting bigfoot.
I guess in some places they are protected — which is weird, too. Not the fact that a government someplace has decided it should be a felony to hunt one, just that the state hasn’t capitalized on this and required a license and a tag to do it.
That's the weird part.
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In Pasco, a suspected car thief used his underwear as a mask while stealing a car.
The teen was allegedly spotted on a car lot in Pasco late one night, and the owners called 911. By the time officers arrived, though, the thief was behind the wheel of a car and trying to drive off the lot.
Apparently, the suspect got out and ran off while officers chased him, and, eventually, he was found wearing a pair of underwear over his head as a mask.
No information was included as to whether the underwear he was wearing on his head were clean or not. That would clearly be too much information.
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Dave Reichert, former King County sheriff, member of Congress and now candidate for governor was in town, but I wasn’t able to attend his get-together. I’ve known Dave a long time and have great respect for him. His comments about Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Ferguson were exactly right.
Ferguson earlier this month released his public safety plan for Washington after years of being part of the reason for high crime in the first place. Blame the cops, be soft on criminals and stop enforcing laws. So now we have a problem — and it’s a serious one.
Ferguson said, "Washington has serious public safety challenges — the data show it, and we need a new approach. Every Washingtonian deserves the freedom to be safe from harm.”
The plan promotes the hiring of additional law enforcement at every level, holding violent criminals more accountable and dealing with the backlog of untested rape kits at the state crime lab, among other priorities.
I guess he means doing things like we used to — until we had one-party rule in Olympia.
Democrats in Olympia tried and in some cases did defund police, trashed good officers and made it hard to hire anyone. I’m told the academy now is more concerned with diversity, equity and inclusion than competency and policing. That’s a problem money alone won’t fix.
Rep. Gina Mosbrucker, R-Goldendale said, "It wasn't long ago, Ferguson's party was asking to defund police, so each one of these items, while all things we can support, are things we've been asking for, for a very long time.”
It was reported Reichert said in part, “they’re not signing up to be cops today because there's no support and they are not allowed to enforce the law.”
Reichert is right.
Not surprisingly, Ferguson didn't respond in time for the story. I'm anxious to hear him defend the mess he’s helped create.
On the plus side, if they ever do encourage enforcing the law again and start arresting criminals, the public defenders are likely going to be attorneys who haven’t been able to or required to pass the bar exam.
It could just be me, but this smells like just one more reason for appeal due to ineffective counsel.
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John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@gmail.com.
