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Wednesday&rsquo;s page 1 story by staff writer Jerry Lynott neatly demonstrated an age-old problem between crime victims looking for answers and law-enforcement officials tasked with finding them. Indeed, it is a problem for all taxpayers who perceive public service as inadequate and the officials providing those services.
				Lynott updated the sad saga of Laurie Merritt, who died six years ago in a Wilkes-Barre fire, a fire initially ruled accidental but later deemed by a state police fire marshal as intentionally set. The case has been open ever since.
				Laurie&rsquo;s family has grown understandably skeptical of work by law enforcement in solving the case.
				&ldquo;The DA tries to pacify my family with bits of &lsquo;comforting&rsquo; words every year around this time&rdquo; Laurie&rsquo;s daughter Kristin Merritt told Lynott via text. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a desperate attempt, and frankly I&rsquo;m sick of pretending and feeding into it. She does more damage and emotionally exhausts us with her empty promises.&rdquo; She added that, frankly, she doesn&rsquo;t want such uninformative updates anymore.
				District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis broadly defended her department&rsquo;s efforts, arguing fire cases even when fresh are difficult because there are almost never any witnesses, and much if not all of the evidence is burned. That certainly seems easy to believe.
				Salavantis also laid blame on the difficulty in getting useful review of what evidence may be gathered. &ldquo;The fact is the investigation is centered around expert analysis of the fire. We have retained and repeatedly met with experts from Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives and the National Fire Academy who are both out of state. We have been unable to obtain further analysis and unfortunately is more difficult than ever.&rdquo;
				Also reasonable, but a bit harder to accept. If there is a need for more experts to do the analysis, maybe it&rsquo;s time we collectively developed the will to provide funding and training for them. Or perhaps there is some middle ground, some intermediate analyzers who may not be the experts we want but could provide enough valuable judgment to accurately prioritize what said experts focus on. A sort of criminal analysis triage.
				A medical field analogy might be the training and hiring of more nurse practitioners, physician assistants and similar upper level providers who, while not holding a doctor&rsquo;s license, can make it easier to determine when a doctor is really needed and when the patient can do fine without that top tier care.
				Similar issues are grappled with outside of law enforcement, of course. Municipalities grapple with questions of fire prevention, food inspections, code enforcement and other responsibilities, almost all leading to complaints that important issues are not being addressed. Our school districts are often swamped with issues beyond basic education, from how adequate special education services are to how well child nutrition, health and welfare needs are being met.
				All complex issues that, bluntly, require tax dollars and vigilance to adequately address. The question becomes one of balancing a desire for lower taxes and a need for better tax-funded services.
				Asking ourselves if there should be more experts available to handle cases like Laurie&rsquo;s death is just the tip of an iceberg we usually prefer to ignore precisely because it is so complex, but that we really should collectively consider.
				What are our long-term priorities?
				&#8211; Times Leader

Their View: Merrit case should force us to examine priorities