Reforming police: Letters to the editor, July 2, 2020

Specific model of policing needed

In the aftermath of the Minneapolis tragedy many worthwhile reformist ideas and solutions have been suggested. And many more will follow.

But let’s look at one of them — community-based policing. It’s a great idea, but the devil is in the details. Fresno covers more than100 square miles. It’s not like San Francisco,New York or Philadelphia with tightly based populations.

So what specifically does community-based policing look like in Fresno? The city is already divided into policing districts, which cover distinct areas of the city.

What’s the next step? More cops on bicycles? Walking the city’s streets? Expansion of community service officers? Citizens review board? Community-based policing is good. But it needs precise definition first, or else like a lot of good ideas it will fall on the trash heap of good intentions.

Mental hospitals are badly needed

The May 30 Opinion section had a Valley Voice about the homeless by Candy Paulsen that caught my attention. I have been concerned about the homeless since the mental hospitals were done away with. Most of them would be in the mental hospitals getting the care they need, mentally and physically, if we still had some. There were no homeless people living on the streets before they were done away with.

Let’s do something about getting the mental hospitals up and running again to help the homeless population. They would put people to work who need jobs and help the communities clean up the mess that the sick, homeless people make. Our city is trashed because of the homeless.

Few bad apples, but good country

The Leonard Pitts column, “America has a rotten tree, not just a few bad apples,” was totally biased. That writer needs to take the blinders off and see all the good in America.

There are a “few bad apples.” All he sees is hatred and racism everywhere he looks. I would like him to remember: Vermont and all the other free states that existed before and after the Civil War, John Brown and all the other abolitionists, the Underground Railroad, the Kansas-Missouri Border War, Abraham Lincoln, Gen. Ulysses Grant, the Civil War — with estimates of up to 750,000 soldiers who died in a country of only 31,443,000 — the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, Reconstruction, Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights laws/legislation of the 1950s & 1960s and all the laws/acts to help the poor and minorities after the ‘60s.

It’s never right to group all people together and it’s offensive. There will always be good/bad in all races, nationalities and religions. Let’s hope that America only gets better as time goes on. All Americans need to step up to the plate and do what is right.

Facing gritty realities of life

Rarely do I take the time to read the columns of self-professed “media/opinion personality” Jill Simonian, as I find them devoid of substantive comments or genuine unbiased analysis.

Her June 7 column, however, caught my eye.

In it, she glossed over the death of George Floyd and colored the protests as possible anarchy because as she said many are protesting and many are perpetrating crimes.

She laments the anti-police signs that crop up.

Apparently she is clueless to the fact that not everyone has the same “cloistered” life and benign relationship with the police she may have.

Not everyone lives in a neighborhood where the police are known to respond within minutes when someone is irate because a person of color is selling lemonade or jogs by their home.

In her eyes what the legitimate protestors are doing is somehow less virtuous than the cookie baking and homespun modeling sessions and pretend “deep” conversations about current events that are played out in her home in suburbia.

Sadly, some have far more gritty realities, and the time for not berating, and not attacking, and not taking the words and vile deeds of those who would kill innocent minorities, has passed.

This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Reforming police: Letters to the editor, July 2, 2020."