Good job making tough choices

Life is a series of choices. Many of them are difficult. Some are life and death.

We published two stories in the Friday edition of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman that featured hard legal choices made by our neighbors. We don’t envy them their tough choices, but applaud their decisions to contact the Palmer Police Department.

While both stories involved young men and their dreadful choices surrounding sexual activity, this is not about the separate criminal acts that led to the arrests last week of David Chandler, 21, and Dylan Klebesadel, 20.

Allegations against Chandler came to light when the director of the Alaska Job Corps called the Palmer Police Department to report that Chandler, a student there, might be in possession of child pornography.

It was a female co-worker of Klebesadel’s who contacted Palmer police after he asked for her help to set him up with a girl, between the ages of 8 and 12, “to get with,” according to a sworn statement from Officer Luke Szipszky.

Picking up the phone to make these calls was the right thing to do. But we recognize these were difficult calls to make. These serious allegations could haunt these young men permanently, and such allegations should never be made lightly.

By placing these calls to police, adults in our community stepped up and stood between our children and the predators who would cause them harm.

This is how we make Alaska safe for children. This is how we end our terrible reign as the nation’s leader for sex crimes, most of which are committed against children and women.

There are always some who argue that the police are bad, too; that no one should trust law enforcement.

We disagree.

Whatever the flaws of our law enforcement and justice system — and we know it’s far from perfect — we still prefer the rule of law to Old-West-style vigilante justice.

None of us will know for many months the guilt or innocence of either of these young men. For now, they’ve only been charged with these crimes and are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Whether either man is eventually found guilty, we support the decisions made to call the police and let them conduct an investigation.

Kudos to our neighbors who made these tough decisions and in so doing acted to protect all children.