It’s understandable why people in the Lower Mainland are sick of gang wars that are still disturbingly apparent here.
The locations of the latest shootings vary from week to week, but the players are invariably connected.
Even the North Shore isn’t immune from gang-related turf wars, with enough incidents to remind us that criminal turf wars rarely respect municipal boundaries — or bridges.
We’ll assume, then, that it was frustration speaking when Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner floated the idea of forcing gangsters who don’t co-operate with police to pay their own medical bills.
The implication was clear: you make a bad choice, you pay the price.
But whatever our opinion on gangsters, this is a bad idea. The only likely result is that seriously injured people wouldn’t seek medical care.
We’ve heard these suggestions in less extreme forms before.
For years people have suggested, for instance, that out-of-bounds snowboarders should pay for their own rescues.
And for an equal time, rescuers have been explaining why that’s not going to work.
People make bad choices. Often, those choices end up being visited on the public purse. But using similar logic, should lung cancer patients who smoked be asked to pay? How about people injured in a car crash where drinking was involved?
Obviously, it would be better if nobody made bad decisions — especially criminal ones. But the strength of our compassion and our societal values shouldn’t be deterred by those.
And there’s no need to compound bad choices with worse ones of our own.
