I don't know how the police put up with dealing with the same people over and over again. Prosecutors and judges let these people off time and time again thinking they will change.
They know they won’t change, but jail costs are a big reason along with prison overcrowding. In my 16 years as a Leo, I have come to change my expectations in regard to how much time(punishment) a criminal is going to get.
When I read over a criminal’s triple I(their entire criminal history excluding citations) I am always amazed at both the length and severity of many of these creatures. We have an infestation of Cleveland assholes that have taken root in this area. It’s not uncommon for small town or medium sized cities to attract big city criminals because they can be big fish in a smaller pond. I have also been told on multiple occasions that we are much nicer than Cleveland police. I actually had a guy say “aren’t you going to beat me now?” And he was being shocked when I was shocked and told him of course not.
Anyway, these guys have so many damn felonies, and recent ones, it baffles me that they are free men. Violent crimes with guns on top of a shit ton of trafficking offenses. We arrested a guy on Wednesday that had been arrested here with a gun a few months ago. He is a felon. Then when he got out of jail in Cleveland, he got shot and arrested again with a gun. He was limping and it was still scabbed. We got him in traffic offenses and a small amount of cocaine, but the baggie had powder residue caked on the entire inside, indicating that at one point, there was a lot more Coke in that bag.
The officer came to me to ask if he could release this guy in tickets. Normally, my answer is absolutely, but I told him no way in hell. This is a dangerous guy, very dangerous, and a serious drug dealer. Fuck him, he needs popped every time we get the chance to try and get him out of our town. He clearly is always going to be a dangerous criminal, and despite getting caught so many times with guns and other felonies, the system is doing nothing with him. We need him gone before he shoots someone here. All of our shootings and murders involve Cleveland assholes.
So to answer your question, I accept that it is part of the job to deal with the same people time and again. However, the local criminals-you develop rapport and it becomes nothing personal, but these out of town guys are seriously bad news, and I always want to grab them and beat the shot out of the, or at least call them what they are-shitheads that couldn’t hack it in their own town so they have to go to a small town to feel big. But I would never act on that anger and frustration, but it comes out with no breaks ever for Cleveland guys.