Snohomish County Prosecutor Janice Ellis says that property crime is “out of sight.” Our deputies race from one 911 call to another.
Our county leaders seem to think that as long as deputies can respond to physically dangerous calls – assaults, domestic violence and severe car crashes – then all is OK. Property crime can take second fiddle. After all, you can replace property, you cannot replace a life. That is all well and good if you catch the property thieves in the end.
But we don’t. The thieves steal our property. We (or our insurance) pay for the replacements. They steal from us again. Our cost of living (and our insurance premiums) rises. The thieves go unpunished, or more to the point, untreated, for their drug addiction. And it keeps on going.
The Herald declares that the 2007 county “Budget may swell ranks of deputies” (Nov. 20) with the addition of 14 deputies. With over half of those deputies going to motorcycle positions, little is left to concentrate on the county’s swelling property crime problem. Motorcycle deputies may make our streets safer. But even as council member Dave Gossett said, motorcycle deputies are a “no-brainer.” They are self-supporting. The council wants your money from traffic tickets. They do not want to solve crime! They do not want to prevent crime!
The Everett Police Department has been through this in the past. Before reinstating the position, the Everett Police Department went for several years without a Crime Prevention Officer. It lost touch with the public and it lost the public’s help in preventing crime. And now the Sheriff’s Office faces that same fate.
Property thieves can be difficult to catch. But property crime can be easy to prevent. It takes a connection with the public that our county leaders just want to pass up.
Steve Moller
Snohomish
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