Editor, Ceres Courier,

High drama criminal cases followed by the media give us the illusion that we are on top of the crime situation in America. But the Chicago Tribune reports that officers failed to respond to 9-1-1 calls for over an hour in their city thousands of times.

Crime prevention needs citizen participation. The problem is, why would we worry about ordinary crime when we’ve got Gabby Petito and the four college students in Idaho to entertain ourselves with nightly?  

Crime exploded after World War II, but get-tough measures failed so badly we gave up on crime. We started downgrading felonies to misdemeanors, then decided not to prosecute misdemeanors altogether. California now refuses to prosecute commercial robbery under $1,000. The reason for this lackadaisical attitude? We are a lazy, licentious and libertarian society. The easiest way to curb crime is to decriminalize it.

The libertarian philosophy says injuring oneself, lying, or acting as the agent of a big organization aren’t really crimes anymore. Alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, fraud, election lying, government malfeasance, false advertising . . . not a problem, folks, all good.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Kimball Shinkoskey