Pay for public safety

We train healthy young adults to fight and kill to protect our freedoms. When they come home, we include some in the gun violence statistics. We say we need to recognize the mentally ill, but when our soldiers need well-deserved help, we don’t have the money. That’s pathetic.

Police are involved more and more in dangerous situations with repeat offenders let out on the streets with weapons. Not only guns. Read the paper and listen to the news. Pedophiles, robberies, drug gangs, killings, all because we can’t or won’t build, staff and maintain jails, and insist that judges put criminals away. What happened to the three strikes law? Oh, I forgot, we want these things but we don’t have the money.

Schools need to educate and get out of law enforcement. I want my taxes to pay for excellent education and excellent law enforcement. Problem students are not the schools’ problems. We are a free society as long as we live within the laws. Read that line over and over until you understand, and show it to your children, and then if you really want it, pay the money.

Dick Gardner

Spokane