‘Putting Things Right’ at the County’s Overcrowded Jail

If anyone deserves praise it is Sheriff Brad Gates and the Orange County supervisors, for having to put up with the stupid, childish behavior of attorney Richard Herman and U.S. District Court Judge William P. Gray.

My taxes as well as all others’ pay Judge Gray’s salary. Like Herman, he has his head stuck in the sand like an ostrich. Who is this Orange County they are talking about, to pay fines for our poor abused jailed inmates? It is hard-working, tax-paying people who abide by the law and who are not in jail.

The American Civil Liberties Union is taking our civil liberties away by making us foot another cost for a group of people who deserve what they get. There is no other place in the world where prisoners are treated as well as in this country.

No wonder the attitude prevails that “who cares, man--it ain’t bad in there.”

My suggestion to Sheriff Gates is to have a meeting with all the police chiefs in Orange County and agree that no officer will arrest anyone unless it is for murder.

Let the drunks, rapists, burglars and you-name-it go free with a reprimand. We Orange County citizens can’t afford it.

Better still, arrest them and put them up at a motel. It will be less expensive than the unrealistic approach now in progress.

EDWARD T. FOSTER

Balboa Island