How to prevent the use of tear gas
There is a better way than using tear gas. Protest non-violently, don’t throw bricks, don’t run around with hammers breaking windows and don’t block major thoroughfares. There are consequences for everything in life and if the consequences stop, you have pure chaos.
Richard Donofry
East Torresdale
Looters out of control
Apparently, destroying property, attacking police and people who had nothing to do with it and looting are the correct ways to protest the murder of a man in police custody these days, because ripping off stuff you want or can sell later is a great way to honor the victim’s memory and call attention to the cause to bring justice to the incident.
Now, it has advanced from common looting to bank robbery, since ATM machines are now targets, and even a couple of grocery stores, since looters ransacked the ShopRite of Parkside and several other businesses at the ParkWest Town Center on 52nd Street for 15 straight hours because the police couldn’t get there before then, since they were stretched out beyond dealing with the looters, handicapped by City Hall, and looking at losing their job when some piece of garbage starts crying brutality if a cop looks at them wrong.
Now, our illustrious idiot of a mayor decides that changing the curfew for the city will fix things. The fact they spent 15 hours looting a grocery shows they couldn’t care less about a curfew. They are greedy animals.
The only ones controlled by Kenney’s BS curfew are the law-abiding citizens having to leave work early, losing pay, those who need to rush getting errands done to be home before curfew, and the owners of what few businesses are allowed to be open, losing evening hours trying to recoup losses. Keep putting these idiots in office.
Hezakiah Levinson
Rhawnhurst
Media need to step up
The media’s headlines scream once again: Police kill another black man. If the situation wasn’t ugly enough, we now have riots in Minneapolis, including the assault of a woman in a wheelchair.
Sadly, it is very hard to have an honest discussion about race, policing and use of force in this media environment.
In the last three years, about 700 black people were killed by police. In the same period, roughly 1,250 white people and 500 Hispanics were killed by police — which the media rarely report. Obviously, this is a problem that affects all of us.
About 500 police officers were killed in this same period. Police also have daily fears about violence against them. The challenge is in ending this cycle, not just pointing fingers.
I suggest the media spend more time exploring police-community issues, most importantly state-of-the-art training in the de-escalation of confrontations.
Police have needlessly killed people of all races who were under the influence or had mental issues. Clearly, the system needs prodding.
We must also have more education for the public, too, on how to interact responsibly with the police officer who stops you.
This approach would be a lot more productive than continually scapegoating police as racists or thugs, when only a tiny group are. Maybe we could reduce unnecessary violence for the sake of all Americans.
Richard Iaconelli
Rhawnhurst
Rioters are destroying the city
How do I describe a peaceful demonstration?
Selma, Alabama in 1965, when Martin Luther King marched arm-in-arm with citizens both black and white, to the state capital in Montgomery, or the peaceful sit-in demonstration in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964.
Now flash forward to the current situation, and the media are reporting what is happening today as peaceful demonstrations.
Buildings set on fire.
Storefronts are smashed,
Businesses are looted,
ATMs are blown up.
These actions are not protesters, they are rioters.
These individuals are taking it out on pharmacies, small neighborhood businesses, restaurants, supermarkets, hardware stores, you name it, that had nothing to do with the death of George Floyd.
It’s a disgrace to see our city boarded up and destroyed, all in the name of protesting.
Al Ulus
Somerton
