SHOW ME THE MONEY

The Boston Globe reported today that a crucial agency helping families hurt by violent crime is closing its doors because the state cut its funding.

Wow, I guess I didn't realize times were this tough.  Having seen how the city is spending our money lately, I was under the impression that we were flush with cash. 

About a month ago, a guy was found removing an abandoned bike from a parking meter. The police stopped him and explained, no, sir, that's not your job.  The city will pay to take care of that, thank you.  

Upon reflection, however, given the nature of his offense, they decided that not only was it not good enough to stop this man from saving the city a few bucks by doing what it would later have to do anyway, but that the man should be punished for taking matters into his own hands.  

In keeping with the spirit of not letting him save taxpayers the cost of paying some poor, overworked public works employee to remove the bike, the government kept the spending spree alive.  They decided that taxpayers should foot the cost of arresting him, holding him in jail, paying for his lawyer, bringing him into court twice and adding another file to an overloaded docket in a busy district court. 

Turns out, however, that since we spent all of this money hauling him into court and paying for his lawyer, the taxpayers got to hear his side of the story.  An old, jalopy of a bike had been left chained on a meter for months.  The tires were flat. It had a layer of dirt film on it from sitting there so long.  So, the man put a note on the bike asking the owner to claim it or have it removed.  When no one responded in 30 days, he went to remove it as advertised.  

After being brought into court first for an arraignment and then a pre-trial hearing, at which he showed pictures of the bike that is still, to this day, chained to the meter with the note prominetly taped to the handlebars, his case was dismissed on 60 hours of community service.  Let me repeat that.  Not only did the government decide that we should pay a city employee to do what this man was doing for free, and that taxpayers should instead fork over wads of cash to arrest and prosecute him for his efforts, but on top of all of that, as if that wasn't an egregious enough abuse of the criminal justice system, they also decided to take away a work week and a half of hours from this man's life.

If we have the money to pay for this kind of nonsense, then I am sorry, but the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute should not be losing one cent from its budget.