Shame has worked for as long as people have lived next to each other. The neighbor who saw you do it and told your mother. The coach who sat you on the bench in front of the whole team. The look on your mom’s face when the store manager walked you back to the register. It wasn’t the jail cell that kept most people honest. It was the idea that the people around you would know, and that knowing would cost you something you couldn’t buy back.
We decided that was cruel, at least in Washington. And now we lead the nation in shoplifting.
But a 33-officer police department in Bonney Lake decided to stop just accepting it. What they’re doing costs nothing, it’s working, and almost nobody else in the state is bothering…