Your columnist here read his copy of last week’s newspaper. The front page story headline “Experts meeting to discuss crime, homeless problems” brought a good laugh.
If you have not seen it yourself, you can read it on smokyriverexpress. com or southpeacenews. com.
During the past week, whenever we needed a chuckle, we turned to the same story. Yes! More chuckles!
As we began to write this column, we began with looking at the story once again. My gosh! Anybody reading this two, three or four times has to be rolling on the floor laughing. Oh, my aching sides!
We mean no disrespect to the well-meaning, intelligent people involved.
We keep having these meetings. Everywhere. Right across Canada, if not the world. We are taking all the right steps. We have important people. We talk. We have bobbling heads nodding in agreement. And after the meeting, and the sage words of wisdom, a month later, a year later, has anything been accomplished? Seriously?
Anything that is, besides providing material for somebody to show up on Canada’s Got Talent and do a comedy routine. Because friends, the more one reads, the more hilarious this all gets.
Is constant crime and the homeless sad? Yes!
Is the fact it just keeps increasing disgusting? Yes!
So why do we still have meeting after meeting, public complaint after public complaint, letter after letter, news report after news report, column after column like this? All worthy of at least a dozen full-length movies. All asking how long people have to put up with this? How long before the patience of the long-suffering public snaps like the incredible rubber band this all is?
My gosh! The fact is, over the years, many of us have gone from tsk tsk. To showing concern. To shaking our heads. To installing cameras. To seeing stores putting valuables behind locked cabinets. To refusing to tempt the fates by taking a holiday or buying a RV or cabin. Or even a new vehicle. Fearing vandalism or theft. Now many of us are not walking streets in the dark. Hiring alarm companies. Going through the whole gamut of what is now, frankly, living in fear.
Are we being alarmist? Fear mongering? Stirring a kettle that doesn’t need stirring? Kicking a hornet’s nest just to create trouble?
Tell that to the farmer broken into not once or twice, but three times. Tell that to cottage owners constantly broken into. Tell that to shoppers who see products locked behind cases, or chained to shelves. Tell that to the person told “lock your vehicle doors” and then had the windows broken out. Or the person who ran inside to get a soft drink and came back to watch his vehicle, left running, driving away.
Yes you fools! It’s all your fault!
Don’t you know the streets are not safe at night? Never leave your vehicle running. Don’t leave tempting parcels in plain sight in your vehicle or on your porch. Triple lock all doors and windows to your home. Chain down your barbecue. And your dog. And your kids. Maybe even your wife!
So do we have answers?
Here’s what the police chief of Chicago told American President Donald Trump during his first term several years ago. Trump asked the chief if he had any answers for Chicago’s ever increasing murders, petty vandalism, drug deaths and drug related crimes.
The chief said, “Yes indeed. We know who all the bad guys are. We just aren’t allowed to go after them and lock them up.”
El Salvador, up until a few years ago, had one of the highest crime rates in South and Central America, if not the world. A new president elected there and started throwing a few bad actors in jail. It worked! So he got some more. So many in fact, he had to build new jails. Today, the criminals are in jails. And the streets and homes are among the safest in the Americas.
Several years ago, RCMP heading for the High Prairie region commented when asked why High Prairie crime statistics had dropped so much in the past year.
“We got all the bad guys locked up. But we expect we will get busy again later this year when some of them start getting out again,” he said.
Is there a pattern here? You bet there is!
There are going to be lots of well-meaning people at the Peace River meeting on May 22. But people who should be there, and answering questions, are not the health and addiction counsellors.
Instead, they are prosecuting attorneys. Alberta’s minister of justice. The minister of public safety and emergency services. The minister of municipal affairs. The premier. These are the people who make decisions why criminals are allowed to roam our streets, highways and roads.
Add in defending lawyers who stand up in court and babble the same nonsense about bad upbringings and also talk a constant stream of people promising, again, to get their lives back together.
Sure! Right after they steal another bike or another bottle of booze or set of tools!
And of course, the judges told to allow this and especially those who personally agree “it’s really a nice system, maybe just needs tweaking.”
It’s nice MLA for Peace River Dan Williams is there. Not because he is the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, but because he is the MLA for Peace River! And needs to be told what we think.
Because folks, whatever it is we are doing, it isn’t working. No matter how much hand-wringing, tears shed, money and energy thrown to ‘make things right,’ rehabilitation and more, it is not working.
Doing more of the same, more talk, more meetings, more money, more ‘help’ and more revolving doors with more criminals walking the streets is not going to do any better.
Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
An observation on stopping illegal immigration across the American-Mexican border:
“Isn’t it amazing what Donald Trump did in his first 100 days in office, both he and Joe Biden couldn’t do in almost 10 years before that!”