Mr. Bruce Peterson’s recent letter needs a reply.
No, there’s no need to live in a bunker here. For two reasons: We enjoy the lowest property crime rates and the lowest violent crime rates in the nation in New York. And, I refuse to live in fear of my neighbors. That isn’t my point, though.
It isn’t the police here that make these crime rates low. Police actually have little effect on crime rates. Police aren’t preventive, they are reactive. Police act after the fact, after the crime has already happened. No, it’s the people who live here and what they are willing to do to each other that determine the crime rate here. Likewise, it isn’t the police there who give Washington the second highest property crime rate, and the 15th highest violent crime rate in the nation. It’s the people there, and what you are willing to do to each other that determine the crime rates you enjoy in Washington.
When you look at the readily available facts detailing crime rates, your part of the nation isn’t quite the safe place you may imagine it to be. Would you like a couple examples to show you that this is so?
Your sheriff department is desperate for more staff, more deputies. The Centralia Police Department is deploying dozens of surveillance cameras through the city to watch you. These agencies only need those things to respond to crimes. So, why do they want more? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t imagine Lewis County to be the safe place you think it is, then praise your local police when they ask for more ways to arrest some of you.
As for those restrictions to the actions of police decried by Mr. Peterson, they are there for exceptionally good reasons. The alternative is police who do what they want to whomever they want, in any manner they want. And, make no mistake, they want these things. No, those restrictions are there on purpose, to prevent this nation from becoming a police state. Citizens, through our constitution and laws are all that keep that nightmare at bay. It is we who tell police what to do and how to do it. The country belongs to us, not the government.
In no case will I entertain complaints from those police about the restrictions we place upon them. It’s a volunteer force. Police know exactly what to do if they find the job too much for them: find something else to do. Compare what happens to a police officer if they walk off the job (nothing) to what happens to a military person if they do the same (court martial for desertion). One of these groups is held to the oaths they take to the constitution, the other is not (qualified immunity).
Jesse Ohlsson
Formerly of Lewis County
