Franklin Connection - Serving Franklin County, WA

In a recent op-ed, state Sen. Mark Schoesler, alluded to a new “bad law” that prevents law enforcement from pursuing criminal suspects in most situations.

He cherry-picks a paragraph from an op-ed in a Seattle newspaper written by one of his senate colleagues, Marka Dhingra, who happens to be the first Sikh elected to a public office anywhere in the U.S.. (The Sikhs are a persecuted religious sect in India.) Also, she has been a deputy prosecuting attorney for King County for 20 years.

I looked up her guest editorial and it seems, Schoesler left out plenty of valuable information. In the last seven years, 30 Washington residents have been killed in high-speed chases, nearly half of them passengers or innocent bystanders.

More recently, in March of 2020, in Chehalis, a dismounted WSP trooper was purposely hit and killed by a fleeing driver doing 100 mph. Spike strips eventually stopped him.

His crime? Shoplifting.

Then, two weekends ago, a motorcyclist in Spokane Valley, tried to outrun police and was hit and killed in an intersection. His crime? A traffic violation.

Nationally, between 1980 and 2015, 11,500 people were killed in police pursuits, with 5,000 as passengers or bystanders.

Schoesler, partisan, as usual, made certain to blame this so-called “bad law” on the Democrats. But when lives are at stake, would it hurt, just once, to be a team player?

Bruce Pemberton

– Palouse