Joyce Harrison wrote,
: Hi Fred,
: This is a subject very dear to my heart. It infuriates me to no end that
: anyone would vandalize a cemetery. I wish we could somehow make the
: offense and the punishment much harsher that it is now. We had a very
: old cemetery vandelized just a few months ago here and it was just
: awful. How do we stop it? Wish I knew. Sorry about the one in
: Wilmington. Joyce Harrison
====
Joyce et al,
Cemetery vandalism is a complex problem. Much of vandalism is done at night
by teenagers who have visited a cemetery as a secure place for drinking. The
privacy of an empty cemetery allows for crimes of opportunity. Any
gravemarker can be vunerable.
Another type of vandalism can be focused to certain "types."
African-American, Jewish, even "Yankee" gravemarkers in the south can be
targets.
I suspect that most of the vandals are emotionally impaired and it would be
impossible to identify in advance just which ones out of the vast sea of
emotionally impaired Americans would trash a cemetery.
There is of course the farmer or contractor who would quietly destroy a
family cemetery for some financial advantage, and our government which
abuses its public domain laws to seize real property and jeopardise small
family cemeteries.
Perhaps a two prong approach would help.
First, make cemeteries less vulnerable (better security). This would make
the cemeteries unpalatable places for the vandals. This would be an
expensive undertaking. It certainly could not be done in every cemetery
either.
Second, make sure that the state cemetery laws have enough bite to deter the
wrong doers. If the state law is inadequate, lobby to change it. If police
officials ignore vigorous enforcement of the laws or the prosecutors sit on
their hands, bring it to the public. There is nothing worse to politicos and
bureaucrats than bad press. A picket line of little ol' ladies in front of
the county court house would make those on the public dole a wee bit angst.
Fred
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