Torrington Representative Michelle Cook is active repealing redundant and stupid laws to simplify law enforcement and give us all faith in our legal system. Drugs are illegal, but if you have drugs near a school that is MORE illegal. As though a law to make people obey other laws is useful. Let’s all check over the nearest hill to see if there is a school there before using any drugs.
In effect 1500 feet from every school is most of Torrington. As though a drug user will check to see if there is a school over the hill before lighting up. If you want an enforceable law make it 200 feet from a school, that is something the police can enforce. It also means the offender know the school is near. It is much more reasonable than charging someone in their own home for marijuana possession just because that home is near a school.
So the Republican say, nooooo, Michelle Cook must like criminals. She doesn’t want to cut off the heads of child molesters and waterboard murderers, she must be soft on crime. But any thinking person, I mean this, anyone who thinks beyond “bad people near school” knows better.
People are criminals. Real people. I met a pilot at a party and I don’t want to tell any of you this. He is a felon. And he works for a major airline. If I told Republicans the name of the airline that could be a problem. So and So Hires Felons! They gave him a chance and he is grateful. Republicans would cut off his hands, but he lived past prison to make a life and family and I respect that.
It seems to Republicans that if anyone ever breaks a law, no matter how stupid the law, they should spend the rest of their lives in prison. Okay, I am exaggerating. Some Democrats think so too.
Any law that has not been invoked should sunset. I just got back from a third world country where babes in arms were held on the back of motorcycles with bicycles in tow, on the same motorcycle, like a tow truck. No one wears helmets. The sewers were open, no railings or fences, and anyone who wasn’t careful could put a wheel in those sewers. They were dry, but when it rained they filled up fast. I saw the evidence of two accidents in my ten days of driving all over the country. One was a large truck in the median on its side and the other was a pickup truck who had spun out in the rain. On the way from the NY airport to home I saw four accidents.
Laws construct our legal system, but laws do not make people honest. It should not be illegal to leave your children in a hot car until they die. If someone does that to their children it was an accident and no amount of prison time will prevent such an accident. It should be illegal to risk injury, to neglect or mistreat children. But no one accidentally kills their children and then deserves prison on top of that, unless they deliberately risked injury, neglected or mistreated the children as well.
Many of our laws make our lawmakers feel good, sound good, but don’t do anything. Like whether it is 1500 feet or 200 feet from a school. Pretty near all of Torrington is withing 1500 feet of a school. Like maybe I would buy drugs from you but isn’t there a school over that hill? Let’s go out of town to do the deal. Do you have a car? Oh let’s just forget it, I don’t really want your drugs anyway.