Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Released just 11 days ago, Michael Derrick Robicheau was held and charged with sexual assault, robbery, and slitting the throat of a 44-year-old late night gas station attendant at an Ultramar station at 571 Portland Street in Dartmouth.

This raises the issue of toothless parole boards whose wise counsel falls upon jurisprudential deaf ears — as well as the nature of the late night retail environment for workers of large corporations.

Apparently, parole boards are hand-cuffed; they have to release a convict who has served two-thirds of the sentence, even if they suspect that the person is still a danger to the community. Why? Why cannot the “dangerous offender” categorization have a broader application?

Thirty-two-year-old Robicheau was convicted of a violent attack, again, on a late night female store clerk eight years ago and surrounding that is 28 convictions for break and enters in the 90s.

The man was deemed to have “low reintegration potential.” But, nonetheless, he was allowed a “community approach.” How nice.

Yet, the vicissitudes of the legal system or policing or the amount of crazies in the world is not really the point: A woman, alone, late at night, in a big city, is at risk. You are never going to have a perfect society. What is more disturbing is that gas stations and fast food organizations continue to put people, and younger people in the case of fast food, at risk.

There is not the traffic volume to necessitate two people often times, so only one worker does it. It is the old profit imperative again.

How about this: Government insists that a minimum of two people work late night and that there are state of the art accouterments: bullet proof glass, more cameras, better training, and maybe even security guards to protect employees – how revolutionary and profligate!

Why not? If there is real money at the late night window and the food is, by and large, unhealthy, why should the work environment be unhealthy too?

The accused, Robicheau, is a dime a dozen and hardly the point. Censure of the state is an easy reflex.

Where are the corporations?