Vigilante mayor?

I write a lot of the crime beat, police blotter stuff for the paper. Last week I wrote about a local Mayor (Bock Mayor Dennis Girard) who was caught on tape tampering with a vehicle and disabling it so that it wouldn't run. When a deputy asked him about it, he admitted to the deputy that he did it. His excuse was he got the wrong car. He thought it was somebody else's.

Hummmm....

At the time the story was published, no criminal charges had been filed. Somebody sent us a tip regarding the incident and I gathered my information from the Sheriff. A citation was issued after the paper had gone to press, and formal charges are pending.

Well, in this weeks paper you will find a letter to the editor from a woman in Bock defending the intentions of the meddling mayor. She wrote that his heart was in the right place.

The letter states the Mayor and his wife "regularly" drive sober cab for people who have had too much to drink and that they have opened their home to allow people a place to sleep it off when libations have been excessive.

Apparently, she stated, that the Mayor was trying to keep a drunk driver off the road this time as well. This time, he didn't drive the person home, he disabled the car so she couldn't drive herself.

Only he got the wrong car.

The letter states that the Mayor tried to apologize to the woman whose car he messed with.

Sometimes, the words "I am sorry" have no meaning.

The letter states, "Dennis Girard's heart was in the right place. Its unfortunate that he may be punished for trying to do a good deed."

On the surface it appears from the letter to the editor that this mayor is a good person and was trying to do a good thing.

But if he was in the habit of giving sober cab rides to people why didn't he just drive the person whom he was trying to save home in the first place?

Word on the street is the driver refused his help. So the mayor took matters into his own hands. In a vigilante move, he decided the person shouldn't drive, so he tried to make it so the person wouldn't, couldn't drive.

Only he got the wrong car.

Now he thinks he can just say I'm sorry and move on.

What if the person whose car he did disable, an innocent person, was in a hurry to get to work. What if the driver had been told by the boss, "If you are late one more time you are fired. No excuses." What if the driver of the disabled car was on the way to an emergency doctor's appointment or to pick up a child from school, or a friends.

There are a lot of what ifs I could come up with. The bottom line is the meddling mayor messed with the wrong car when he tried to play cop, judge and jury.

Dudley Moore once said, "The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it." Perhaps the mayor should have called one. Some people need to see the bars to stop drinking too much at the bars.

Peace.