LETTER TO THE EDITOR | Police are needed at Whidbey public events

Published 3:59 pm Friday, October 2, 2015

Editor,

Yesterday was the annual Children’s Day celebration, which I attended with my 4-year-old daughter, my 20-month-old son, and the seven-year-old son of a friend of mine.

First let me say, “Thank you,” to everyone who made the event happen. The day was fabulous! The free event was well put together, full of fun activities and awesome children’s entertainment.

We arrived there around 10:30 a.m. While sitting in the bleachers with the kids watching the magic show, a man that I vaguely recognized, but could not place, made eye contact with me from across the way. I then noticed him several more times and at one point he even crossed the area and sat down by us on the top of the bleachers. Trusting my instinct, and feeling strange, the kids and I went and found something else to do. However, for the remainder of the day, I continued to see the man, alone, not with a partner or any children of his own, wandering the event, and often in relatively close proximity to me and my kids.

I have no idea if he knew me, or if he was a total stranger who just looked familiar, but my over-protective mama bear instincts were burning like crazy. One thing which really disturbed me was that there was no police presence at an event geared specifically towards children and highly advertised. There were lots of kids running around with no parents. There were some kids being carried by their parents kicking and screaming because they didn’t want to leave. If someone had tried to take an unattended child out to their car, would anyone have noticed?

Bad things can happen anywhere, even here, and while thankfully nothing like that happened, and a good time was had by all, I would definitely have felt safer knowing that someone was there watching over the crowd specifically to ensure something like that did not happen.

Sincerely,

SKY GRAHAM

Freeland