What Wilkes-Barre needs is more razor blades

We’ve got a couple of local blogs making noise about the “rash” of recent car break-ins in Wilkes-Barre, specifically in the downtown. And a companion rant takes issue with the effectiveness of the surveillance system that has been recently installed in selected parts of the city.

I’ve heard from members of the WBPD that there have been many, many technical glitches associated with that camera system. I’ve actually been told that it’s completely operational only some of the time. Hopefully, the kinks are being worked out, and we can expect some enhanced security here and there.

I read somewhere on the local Internet that those monitors connected to the system are not being manned by police officers. But since officers on light duty have been regularly assigned to them, that claim is debunked to some degree.

Personally, I see the surveillance system as another useful tool for law enforcement, so I’m kind of perplexed about the constant carping about it. Would we prefer to not have that system in place?

As for the recent wave of cars being broken into, what? Is that a new phenomenon?

After I was transferred to our downtown store circa 1983 or so, my trusty AMC Hornet station wagon was violated twice while parked in the central parking garage on S. Main Street. The first incident cost me a Panasonic cassette deck and a new side window. And the second go-round cost me another side window, but not a new deck since I had glued razor blades to the backside of the new deck. The trail of blood certified my budding genius.

Finally, I got smart and had my company transfer my parking pass from the parking garage to the ground lot behind the restaurant. The ground lot provided no such privacy to the lawless bastards of the world as the parking garages obviously do, so my car suffered nary a scratch after that.

My point is as follows. Car break-ins are nothing new, so why all of the accusatory tones? Is it not beyond patently obvious that if you leave valuables of any sort in your parked vehicles, you are inviting a police report?

Is it the fault of the administration of any city if you park in the most secluded spot in a given downtown--a concrete parking garage, and then compound that original lack of thought by leaving goodies in the vehicle? People steal stuff, they’ve been doing so since the Big Bang, so I’m not really sure what all of the fuss is about.

And to make the claim that crime is the fault of the mayor strongly suggests that you have no confidence in your 90-strong police department. If he’s viewed as less than stellar in these policing respects, what of the boys and girls in blue? They are amazing despite him? Doesn’t wash.

Societal decay is not the fault of any one person, any one municipal government or any well-run police department. And to mistakenly believe that it could be that simple is to set yourself up for disappointment after disappointment.

The economy has been strangled by the fast-strengthening hands of uncertainty as policy, half of our populace seems to be happily addicted to some sort of drug, people seem to have less and less and less respect for each other and a few smashed car windows is somehow a shock?

It must be me.

With that, I will now retreat to my world of Fantasy football, thank you very much.

Bye