First, graffiti jerks are rarely caught.

Second, if one is caught and forced to do clean up, that still doesn’t stop others who think they’re smart enough to not get caught.

Third, catch and punish does nothing to dissuade future taggers because they are currently too young to have ever even heard of someone getting caught and punished for graffiti.

Ban spray paint and marker sales to minors. And require to post office to keep self adhesive labels behind the counter and not give them to minors. This is not rocket science. Cops and the media go hog wild over cannabis arrests, but graffiti,——it’s ho-hum, big deal, can’t see it from my house, doesn’t affect me, I live in a lily-white suburb.

You go completely off topic and try to solve nuclear proliferation with good parenting skills. Let me tell you something, all the good parenting skills in the world is not enough to help some kids. But that’s off topic.

This particular case boils down to ONE SIMPLE PROBLEM. There is no good reason for the post office to have free graffiti stickers laying around up front. Hell, all you don’t-spend-a-taxpayer-dime on anything people should be on my side.

And for those clamoring for more surveillance, WHAT? A cop for every individual? Because that’s what we’d really need and it ain’t going to happen. Not until we get robocops who work for free with no union contracts.

If above is too long for you to read:

POST OFFICE: Be a good neighbor and quit giving away free graffiti stickers.

My comment is aimed at those who, when they see a glass half-empty, think the world’s reserve of civility is on the decline. I, on the other hand, am not a person who, when he sees the same glass, thinks things are looking pretty good — I just see a glass half-empty, and I’ll spend the time to look backwards and see that the glass has probably always been half-empty.

The kids who blew out the windows of the Federal Bldg (half a Century ago) had to pay to have the windows replaced, and had to fill the cannon’s bore with concrete. Kids will always be kids, which is why parents have to always be parents.

If Civics were still a subject taught at school, we *might* not have as many acts of vandalism — but, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have as many elected officials do a lot of the un-civil things they do.

Seems the perfect darlings of yester-year fairly regularly packed the cannon with firecrackers to every sensible adult’s chagrin. Then one evening, some overeager kids decided to one-up everyone else and actually put a full charge of gunpower in the cannon and packed it with paper wadding. The resultant blast broke all the facing windows at the Federal Building across the street (now the downtown post office).

This was in the 1950’s.

The solution to any kid’s misbehaving, is to simply remove the temptation. This was as true in 1950, as it is today, and will be in 2060.

Now, if we could only figure out a way to make sure no future governor could blockade the streets in front of the State House and place M16-armed guards at the intersections — talk about uncivil behavior.