Budget priorities askew

Regarding the recent Herald article, “Costs top $300,000 in two trials”: Are we supposed to let these people walk or settle for less sentencing to save a few nickels out of close to $600 million in a county budget? We can spend somewhere around $16 million in this new budget for new sports fields and apparently monies like these are sacred cows. We can’t find $300,000 to field a two man cold case squad to try to solve some 50 murders with new technology. My daughter, Michelle, was murdered in 1990 and the case is still unsolved.

Anyone care to know the amount of man hours, court time and jail time it costs (in dollars) to put a victimless crime person behind bars? I am referring to the otherwise law abiding citizen who gets arrested for a little baggie that he was going to smoke with his non-beer drinking buddies at the next football game in the privacy of their homes. Where is the damage to society in comparison to murder? No sensible person, not even the small dealers, wants to see drugs end up in the hands of school children – but making them illegal hasn’t stopped that, has it? Could it be that dude with the small baggie was driving a new car? Ca-ching, ca-ching goes the cash register as the car is seized and perhaps another otherwise law-abiding family is headed for divorce as collateral damage mounts.

Where are the good reporters to bring us the truth and what the priorities really are? Seventy-seven million Americans have tried pot and I just don’t see the overflow of heroin addicts. Do you?

Camano Island

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