Decay overwhelms police

I hear many complaints, some justified and some not, about our Spokane Police Department working extremely short-staffed trying to handle the burgeoning crime rate, which is also a national problem.

The real problem is many-fold, but lies in a decaying society, along with the family structure and drugs, which accounts in some form for over 80 percent of our prison population. As an 80-year-old native of Spokane, I have witnessed it firsthand.

Growing up here, you never locked your house or car, and you could leave your new bike in the yard for days, and no one would touch anything. Violent crime was almost nonexistent. A friendly policeman walked a beat in the neighborhood.

Families were tightly knit from mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, down to your favorite uncle and aunt, all of whom had a hand in raising you. Divorce was unheard of. Now the divorce rate is 51 percent and increasing at an alarming rate.

Drugs and the shattered family structure, for whatever reason, are the problem, not our short-handed police force.

James A. Nelson

Spokane