The old saying “you can feed a mad dog a steak and it will still bite you” is playing out in Vermont.
A creature devoid of conscience simply doesn’t care about kindness, compassion, “good intentions” or other humanizing attributes.
Ignoring “petty” crimes and minimizing serious ones while shouting to the mountaintops for bail reform, restorative justice, defunding the police has consequences. “You reap what you sow.”
When hardened criminals are “punished” with minimal penalties, when prosecutors refuse to prosecute, when municipalities engage in laissez-faire homelessness and drug policies, “You reap what you sow.”
And the recruiting ads for understaffed law enforcement? Who would want to work for an ungrateful, unsupportive, denigrating employer (the public castigation of police for minor infractions, or “offenses” otherwise widely accepted by the public at large)?
The boiling frogs in Vermont need to wake up and smell the coffee. Now is the time for realism, not pie-in-the-sky idealism.
Rob Wood
Newport
