Featured Letter: Less love, more locks for criminals

To the editor:

The Feb. 12 editorial stated in its headline “We can’t arrest our way out of a gang problem.” You’re partly right, but the problem is not arrests, it’s convictions and incarceration. Less love and more locks. Your article notes that drug and weapons defendant Darius Strong recently got off parole. How many other defendants have a history of parole and/or probation? Another of the arrested, Mr. Murrell, is “expected” to serve two years in prison. My guess is he will be back on the street in six to nine months. The liberal politicians like Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and accidental former Gov. David Patterson, to name only a few, have helped perpetuate the epidemic of drugs and gangs by being soft on crime.

Examples are the repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws in 2009 and the alteration of NYS penal drug laws. The criminal element takes full advantage of these liberal programs. More and more, repeat drug offenders have been released or not prosecuted in order to sell poison to our children again and again. Mr. Editor, you previously proposed the punishment all drivers with alcohol ignition interlock devices; where is your fervor in the punishment of actual drug offenders?

Another major concern I have is that a member of the Southold Town government and a Riverhead school board member, Lori Hulse, is representing an accused conspirator to drug charges. Aren’t there enough criminal defense attorneys in the area for her client? Drugs are so prevalent in all of our schools. I thought she was elected to help protect our children from drugs? Conflict of interest? Members of the East End Drug Task Force include members of the Southold Town Police Department. The same town that also employs Ms. Hulse as assistant town attorney. Another conflict of interest? I do not know Ms. Hulse personally, only through school mailings, but I do take offense to these potential conflicts. Either be a government attorney and school official or be a criminal defense attorney, not both.

Richard Park, Riverhead