Connected or not, recent Bel Air incidents are an outrage [Editorial]

We're not sure what to make of a teenage girl telling Bel Air Police Tuesday afternoon that she had been held at gunpoint on a street near Bel Air High School.

Neither are we sure why, despite Bel Air Police assurances to the contrary, some in the community think that incident is connected to vandalism outside of the Mary Risteau Building that houses the District Court. We'll leave investigating those two episodes to the professionals.

What we are sure of, however, is our outrage at both incidents, connected or not. The thought that someone would pull a gun on someone else during daylight hours in Bel Air is horrifying.

The idea that someone would spray paint graffiti on the Fallen Heroes Memorial outside of the District Court building is infuriating. Whether the large, black MS is real gang graffiti, of which Bel Air Police are unconvinced, is immaterial. It's there, it shouldn't be, and those who did it should be severely punished.

We don't know how to clean such markings off the memorial's surface; like police investigations, we will leave that task to the experts. But their services shouldn't be needed because it should never have happened.

In the olden days, there were punishments we think might be appropriate for the miscreants responsible. How about locking them in stocks so they can view their misdeeds for a day? Or what about some feathers sprinkled over a layer of tar? Or, perhaps, a scarlet MS painted on their foreheads?

None of those will happen, of course, but defacing a memorial to those who gave their lives protecting their community is a pretty low thing to do. We sure would like the punishment, in this instance, to fit the crime.