Gosh darn it!
Eight-year-old Logan Fisher was mad as heck when strangers broke the front door of his Brooklyn Park home and stole thousands of dollars worth of electronics, not to mention invading his bedroom where they swiped his wallet filled with quarters.
"My mom told me I had to use my anger in a positive way," Logan said.
So with the confidence of a masterful politician, the soon-to-be fourth-grader stepped onto a stool and up to the microphone during Tuesday's City Council meeting. In a speech he wrote out in pencil, then had his mom type, he told officials a thing or two about making his city safer.
"One idea I had was for the police to drive the SWAT vehicle around the city, put some fear in these criminals so they pack up and move somewhere else," he told the mayor and City Council members. Maybe the city needs a few more police officers, he added.
The criminals are "stalkers and cowards, walking and driving our streets waiting to strike," he wrote. "We have to watch out for each other."
And city officials have to get tough on crime. "If we can have zero tolerance in our elementary schools, then we should be able to go back to the '3 strikes and you're out of Brooklyn Park' rule. Let's do it," he told the council. "Please come up with more and better ways to enforce the laws so Brooklyn Park is a safer place to live."
"We need to get mean and we need to mean it. Thank you for listening," he said.
Logan has no shortage of ideas but said after the meeting that he had to come to the council because "I figured I couldn't start a whole program by myself.''
Deputy Police Chief Craig Enevoldsen couldn't agree more with Logan on some points: Neighbors watching out for neighbors and police patrols are good ideas.
But patrolling city streets with an armored SWAT vehicle? Well, not so practical.
