The dangers of being a law enforcement officer will never go away. If anything, they only will increase for the men and women in uniform.
Recently, it seems, there hasn’t been a week that’s passed in Oklahoma where one or more law enforcement officers haven’t been involved in a high speed pursuit or a shooting. In some cases, it’s been both.
There’s such a lack of respect anymore for the law and for those who are charged with the daily responsibility of enforcing it.
There have been several instances in Lincoln County over the past several weeks where the same suspect has been charged with multiple felonies in different cases.
As an example, in early April a man was charged with two felonies in a case and he failed to make his initial appearance. Within nine days of when prosecutors had filed the two felonies, they filed three more felonies against him as the result of a high speed pursuit over county roads.
In early March, a driver was charged with nine counts, several felonies and misdemeanors. In mid-April, prosecutors filed four more charges against him.
And in another instance, in March, a man was charged with a felony and exactly a week later three more felonies were filed against him for allegedly committing other crimes.
These are just a few of the instances we point out to show crimes people are committing appear to be more serious and more numerous.
These are examples of these types of crimes that are being committed in a single county. Some of these additional felony offenses are occurring while some of these people are out on bond awaiting court appearances on the first crimes that landed them on the wrong side of the law.
While jails in some counties and in our prisons are bulging now, there have be solutions found to deal with these criminals.
One is there has to be a way of keeping these people locked up so they can’t be going out and committing additional crimes while they’re waiting for their day in court on the initial charges.
We’re not sure if that means increasing the bonds on some of these more serious felonies or what.
The revolving door system has to be eliminated. Some of the people charged in the instances cited either had been out of prison a short time or their term was suspended, making it easy for them to return to a life of crime.
And, without being scientific, we’d guess 75 to 80 percent of these serious crimes or possibly more are drug or alcohol-related.
The solution probably lies with the State Legislature. They need to stop dodging the bullet and address it now.