Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the politicians could legislate all the crime out of our lives? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not soft on crime or DUIs but Steve King is dreaming if he thinks that yet another new DUI law will save lives.

King uses the Strawmatt case as the lynchpin of his proposal to put more people in prison for over drinking. Common sense would indicate that Mr. Strawmatt thumbed his nose at the law and all of the penalties that go with it. No law would have prevented this inveterate criminal from drinking and driving. What’s next? Should we give the officers on the street the authority to execute DUIs on the spot?

Let’s just suppose that a normal citizen in our community is convicted of DUI, say 20 years ago after a Christmas party. Now he is promoted to captain on the local police department. There is a party for him, (yes, cops drink, too) where he has a few beers and starts for home. On the way, he decides that maybe he has had too many and pulls off the road to sleep. The outside temperature is -10 degrees, so he leaves his engine running in order that he does not freeze. Several hours later, an officer investigates and arrests him for DUI. Believe it or not, it is unlawful to sleep in your car after drinking if the key is in your ignition. Under King’s proposed new law, this man now goes to prison as this makes his second arrest for DUI which has now become a felony crime.

I suggest Mr. King do something really valuable for the community and propose a law similar to Arizona’s that makes it a crime to hire illegal immigrants. The meth problem that kills more people that DUIs might be another challenge worth his time.
By the way, what new taxes will be required to built the vast number of new prisons to accommodate King’s law?

TERRY CHELIUS
Grand Junction

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 1:21 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.