Crime & Punishment - my response to a Baltimore Sun Article about new tougher sentences in Baltimore

We have the worst officers maybe in the country, I am so sure that these officers are worse criminals than the supposed, "thugs" residing within the city. I get pulled over on a weekly basis for literally the most ridiculous reasons. I go to work and, I just graduated from a very good school in Towson, Maryland. I'm originally from the Eastern Shore and though the police have their own problems there I have never seen so much discrimination in one place than I do in Baltimore City, it is getting ridiculous at this point. No wonder police officers are getting shot. Maybe if they stopped terrorizing the very citizens that they are paid, with our tax money to protect their wouldn't be so much negative sentiment against them. And to Commissioner Bealefield, you are not a very smart man, how many more studies do we need to show you that mandatory criminal sentences do NOTHING to stop crime. All it does is make the people more weary of law enforcement and go to greater lengths to get away or get some measure of payback. If an officer stopped me and I knew I was facing years in jail anyway in my mind and in the case of a lot of these Baltimorians minds why not take their chance by firing a few shots. I am bored at 8 hours of work, so do you realize what 10 years in prison does to somebody? I think we as a nation are so used to politicians calling for tougher and tougher sentences that we fail to realize how substantial it is to lock up a man or woman for "YEARS" at a time. How about we fix the underlying problems that lead to criminal behavior like schools, jobs, healthcare etc etc. ..... and stop saying over and over the same irrelevant rhetoric that only if we could lock them up for more time, our streets will be safer, they will not be nor will they ever be if we don't wake up and stop with the USELESS rhetoric!