Woman who stole library books turns herself in to GJPD

The woman who allegedly stole an armload of books on transgender topics from the downtown Mesa County Public Library on December 17, then ripped pages out of them and dumped them in a trash can, has turned herself in to the Grand Junction Police Department, according to an article in this morning’s Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

She was identified as Marty Mykytiuk, age 71, a retired English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher.

CrimeStoppers (241stop.com) posted information about the crime as the “Crime of the Week” on Wednesday, December 24, along with a photo of the suspect taken from the library’s surveillance cameras, on the same day Mykytiuk turned herself in.

The crime was committed just one day after the Mesa County Commissioners (Cody Davis, JJ Fletcher and Bobbie Daniel) unanimously appointed two new people with known right wing political/religious views to the Mesa County Library Board of Trustees. To facilitate their change to the makeup of the Library Board, the commissioners rejected two well-established, nonpartisan trustees who currently sit on the Library Board and had requested to serve a second term, as well as many other highly qualified new applicants. A contentious public hearing over the appointments drew an overflow crowd of citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom publicly questioned the commissioners’ lack of transparency in their choice of board members, their passing over of far more qualified applicants and concerns that the appointment of two people who were obviously selected for their ideological views would inflame the kind of Republican culture wars that could lead to censorship and banning of books at the library on topics some conservatives feel are controversial, like LGBTQ topics.

Culture wars erupt when one group tries to impose its own ideology on the mainstream society.

In recent years, under convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser/President Trump, Republicans have increasingly taken the opportunity to leverage culture wars to manufacture outrage, mobilize their base, divide American citizens along ideological lines and gain an electoral advantage by concentrating attention on inflammatory social issues like immigration, transgenderism, racism, climate change and educational policies that tend to animate and turn out right-wing voters.