For many of us, walking from our home to our car is a chore. For many of us, walking from the car to a store or restaurant is sometimes too painful to think about, much less accomplish.

For these reasons handicap spots are positioned near the front of businesses, near the front of churches and the like to lessen the challenge of simply making it from the car to the door. It is a task many of us take for granted.

Far too often in Selma, a handicap spot has been filled with a driver far too lazy to walk a little extra or used by a family member of someone handicapped simply to be able to use the handicap tag.

It takes a special kind of person to be so low, so lazy, to take a spot some of those in our community rely on desperately.

For these reasons and many more, we strongly endorse the efforts of the Selma Police Department to crack down on those violating the law and parking in parking spots dedicated to those who need it.

It is important for the police department to make examples out of those who would not only violate the law, but violate what is good and decent. It is important we are all reminded that we are blessed to be able to walk from one side of the parking lot to the next, that we can park around the block from a restaurant without stealing from someone who needs that handicap spot.

Selma Chief of Police William T. Riley has talked from experience about the importance of handicap spots, having needed to use them following back surgery.

It was during this period of time that showed him what has been an epidemic in many areas for those with no handicap whatsoever simply stealing from those who needed it the most.

We applaud Riley and the department for putting renewed focus on this problem.