By BILL BERRY
of The Gazette
This summer has brought more than hot days and nights to Stevens Point's old south side.
It has delivered a scourge worse than any heat wave. We've been hit by the pestilence known as thievery. In this case, brazen thievery.
A few examples:
A young college student next door to our Strongs Avenue home had her bicycle cabled and locked to the porch rail a couple of months ago. Someone cut the cable and went off with her bike.
Down a couple of blocks and around the corner on Dixon Street, a friend parked his bike in a secluded yard behind another friend's home during a short visit. A half-hour later, the bicycle was gone, stolen from right beneath their noses, as it turns out.
Even more brazen was the theft of a brand-new canoe from neighbors who live directly next to the Stevens Point Police storage facility on Strongs Avenue. Cops regularly come and go from the building, an old city fire station. That didn't stop the thieves.
You get the idea: These people are not only brazen, they're creepy snoops, lurking about neighborhoods in the darkness, watching the comings and goings of hard-working people who don't think like criminals and end up getting burned for it.
Personally, these thieves seem a lot more threatening than some of the people dragged into court for, say, growing marijuana in their bedrooms, But that's another story.
Every few years, thieves ravage neighborhoods like ours. A few years back, someone busted into my wife's car and stole a stereo system. It cost a couple of thousand dollars and weeks of headaches just to repair the dashboard that had been shredded during the theft.
Eventually, the thief was identified. My wife received a notice that she was scheduled for restitution as a part of his plea bargain. Now that was a laugher. Of course, it's a fact that restitution is almost never paid in these matters, and the whole process is a feel-good formality. "Restitution was ordered," reads the court document. There, that takes care of that.
Another tact may be much more effective. Rather than ordering restitution, perhaps sentences should require the thieves to walk around town chained to their booty, dragging the bikes and canoes and stereo systems wherever they go. Someone would probably object though, on the grounds that that would be cruel and inhumane.
So there's nothing much to do except make sure your belongings are secure and wait for winter. Maybe some of the riff-raff will move on or at least cut back on their nighttime prowling.