It started last week with a report of some mischief in the central area of the city.
Residents reported their homes and vehicles were spray-painted. Some items were stolen and left in the yards of nearby residents.
Arguably the worst part was that a vehicle’s tire was slashed.
It’s not just an aggravation and an inconvenience for the affected residents. It’s one of those things that we hear about, shake our heads and wonder why someone would do it.
Since then, we’ve heard of other issues of vandalism in the community. Buildings at Spruce Ridge School and south of the Estevan Comprehensive School have also been desecrated with spray paint.
We don’t know for certain yet if these incidents are connected, but the police believe they are, and when you consider the similarities in the damage, we should expect there is a connection.
It’s also frustrating that these incidents have occurred, and nobody was immediately caught.
It’s tough to catch people while they’re doing this. It happens in the middle of the night, without witnesses. The police can’t be everywhere in the city. When they do happen, we can only cross our fingers and hope our properties aren’t next.
Some people will blame kids for these incidents as well, but there’s no guarantee that kids are the culprits. Yes, young offenders often are responsible for incidents such as spray-painting, but maybe we should try to avoid jumping to conclusions until we know the facts.
Fortunately, we have yet to hear anyone calling for a curfew. Back in the early 2000s, when Estevan had another series of vandalism incidents in the fall, some started to call for a curfew for young people.
But the incidents abated, winter settled in, and once the spring started up again, the vandalism didn’t resume. People stopped talking about curfews, and focused on other issues of the day.
Curfews don’t work. All they do is punish the good, law-abiding kids, who happen to be in the majority. The kids who cause problems that result in the curfew with are going to continue to cause problems. And guess what? They aren’t going to obey curfew, either.
And curfews tie up police and the courts. Members of the Estevan Police Service and the Estevan RCMP have better things to worry about than whether a 15-year-old kid is out with friends after 11 p.m.
Parents should set curfews, not Estevan city council.
So kudos to those who have resisted the urge to call for a curfew amid this latest round of vandalism in our city.
If you want to see why we don’t need a curfew, last Friday is a perfect example. There were 153 kids who graduated from the Estevan Comprehensive School, the culmination of 12 years of hard work in elementary school and high school.
The bulk of these kids will never run into problems with the law. They’ll never be charged with a crime.
The biggest infraction they will commit will likely be speeding.
These are the young people of our community. Sure their hair might be a little longer than we want, and it might not be a colour that we want. Maybe they spend a little too much time on their smartphones and other wireless devices.
But the vast majority of them are good kids who will be good representatives of their community. We hope they’ll remain in this community and start a family of their own.
As far as who’s responsible for the graffiti, the thefts and the other recent incidents, we hope two things will happen. One is we hope the vandalism will stop. There’s lots to do in this city during the summer months. The temperatures are warmer. The weather is beautiful. Why waste a beautiful summer’s night by damaging somebody’s property.
And hopefully they’re caught and held accountable for their actions. Let the victims of their crimes see who was responsible.
A sentence that involved removing graffiti and performing other cleanup duties around the community would be rather appropriate.
