Law enforcement officers face enough obstacles in doing their jobs each day that they shouldn’t have to keep arresting the same criminals over and over.
Thinking about it further, that seems counter productive.
That’s what’s happening though, in some cases recently, in Lincoln County.
Several of these cases quickly come to mind. They are good examples of what we’re talking about.
In one instance, a man pleaded guilty in Lincoln County District Court to two charges and the judge handed him deferred sentences on both counts, assessed him fines and ordered probation.
A few hours later, local police again arrested him for a felony and hauled him off to jail. On the new charge, he is accused of assaulting the same man that just a few hours before he admitted to assaulting through his guilty plea.
He now awaits his day in court again.
In another case, a man who was charged with assaulting two police officers was formally charged with a new felony two days prior to his scheduled preliminary hearing on the two other felonies.
He’d already been convicted of a felony in 2018 and he’s now accused of three additional felonies in two separate cases.
And yet another example is of a man facing a serious felony count who was charged in late October. Four days later, he was arrested and taken to jail on an additional felony because he was out roaming the streets able to allegedly commit another crime.
Enough is enough. This revolving door system has to be eliminated.
While jails in some counties and in our prisons may be bulging now, there have to be solutions found to deal with these criminals.
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.
All of the examples cited here are of people committing additional crimes within hours and days, at the most maybe three months, of when they were arrested and charged initially.
We’re not sure if that means increasing the bonds on some of these more serious felonies or what.
Without being scientific, we’d guess 75 to 80 percent of these serious crimes or possibly more are drug or alcohol-related.
We doubt seriously that Lincoln County is unique and this serious problem is widespread over the state.
The solution most likely lies with state legislators. They need to stop dodging the bullet and address it now.
Though they held a special session last week, their next regular session begins in a little over two months. Addressing this issue should be on their agenda with finding a solution their goal.
It’s imperative they do.