Letter to the editor Archive

0

To chase or not to chase

 

Over the past week and a half I have heard and read about whether the chase the resulted in the death of one of Albany’s finest was right or wrong.  Then there was the question over wither the people being chased should be charged with murder.

As a 23 year veteran of the Albany Police Department and serving 8 years as a Police Chief, I would like to respond to these questions.  First should she have chased?

First, the APD has a very strict policy dealing with chasing.  It addresses when to chase, how many cars can be in the chase, as well as public safety.  This policy is several pages long and very through.  This policy has been in effect since the early 1990’s

Second, this officer had a split second to decide if this situation called for a chase or not, start the chase, notify dispatch what was going on (where she was, direction she was going, and a description of the vehicle she was chasing.  She has to do all of this while driving at unknown speeds, keeping calm enough to be understood over the radio.

Should she have given chase?  The people in that van had just committed an armed robbery; she had every right to chase and really had an obligation to spot them.   Had she not chased, and they committed another robbery and killed someone the cries would be different.  The city would have been asking why she did not stop them when she had the chance.

I have also heard that she was not trained to be in a chase.  Every officer certified in the state of Georgia must take and pass a class on Emergency Vehicle Driving.  I challenge any of you to drive the course she had to drive to gain her certification.  Yes she was very well trained to be driving that Police Vehicle during that chase.

Yes, they most definitely should be charged with murder. She died because they were committing a felony.  Her death would have never happened it they had not started the chain of events.

Wake up Albany; we should be doing everything we can to make sure her children are taken care off.  The City of Albany has not accepted her as the hero she is, we should thank God that the city has officers who are ready to give their lives to keep us safe.

If the City is going to name a bridge after anyone then it should be a true hero like this.  Often we do not realize what we have until we lose it.

Chief Thomas (Barney) Knighton

Retired

Editorial Disclosure: Chief Knighton is the father of The Albany Journal publisher Tom Knighton. However, based on Chief Knighton’s experience with the Albany Police Department in particular and law enforcement in general, we feel his perspective was deserving of being published in its own right, regardless of familial connections with this paper’s management.

0

Letter to the Editor

Students of today need to read news with a critical eye. It is vital to enhancg democracy and defeating narrow-mindedness. Students also need an understanding of the world’s economy, politics, social structures and environment in order to make the best decisions about how to live their own lives.

From Afghanistan to Iraq, current events have taken on special importance for young Americans living in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. But, mounting pressure to meet state curriculum requirements and assessment tests means current events rarely get discussed thoroughly. Current events are something that can be used every day if a teacher has the skill and the imagination to connect the present to the past.

Being from a rural, high poverty area, it is not unusual for a student to let me know that he or she has never been outside of the county. Many times, the only window my students have to the outside world is in my classroom.

My students are trying to raise money for a weekly newsmagazine published by Time Magazine.  TIME For Kids is a weekly classroom news magazine that motivates kids to read! Issues cover a wide range of real-world topics kids love to learn about – and it’s the best nonfiction text you’ll find!   A powerful teaching tool, TIME For Kids builds reading and writing skills and is easily integrated across your curriculum, including social studies, science and math.

If you are interested in helping by either donating or spreading the word of this project through Facebook or Twitter- please go online to www.donorschoose.org/connell

We appreciate your help!

 

Ed Connell and Students

Pinegrove Middle School

Valdosta, Georgia

 

0

No Race Riots Here


Not to worry: The recent beating of a white football coach by 30 black people in Georgia was not a race riot. The Associated Press called it an “ambush.” A local TV station said a “fight broke out:” Maybe the coach attacked the mob, instead of the other way around.

Whatever. The attack left the coach with several broken bones in his face.

We know it was not a race riot because we would have read about that in the newspapers.

An almost identical incident last year in Florida was not a race riot either. Anyone who notices race is an organizing factor in in a growing number of robberies and assaults has problems, says an editor at the biggest newspaper in Chicago.

These non-race riots are not happening more often, in more parts of the country.

Just a few days ago, 30 black people surrounded a mobile beverage cart in Minneapolis and robbed its white occupants. That was not a race riot. I know that because the police chief in Wisconsin says crime is color blind.

If this were a race riot, we would have read about it.

A few days before that in Philadelphia, 30-50 black people stormed a house chasing two white teenagers. The teenagers may or may not have laughed at someone who fell off a bike at a nearby park. There was a gun. Later, another crowd of 30 black people returned, threatening the white homeowners with violence if they testify in court.

In the last two years, in hundreds of episodes in more than 50 cities, non-racial groups of black people — sometimes in the thousands — have been stealing, beating, threatening, even raping and killing. The victims are usually white.

If you don’t go to YouTube and search black mob violence, you will not see video news stories of hundreds of these non-race riots. So who are you going to believe: The media? Or your lying video tapes?

In Atlanta last summer, hundreds of black people beat and robbed and marauded through downtown during Screen on the Green night. Many of the victims of this non-race riot were gay — as is often the case in other non-race riots.

Local news stations did not notice. Local gay people and other residents did — all on YouTube.

And of course lets not forget the non-race riot on the Atlanta’s Marta line, where in the Spring, dozens of black people assaulted two flight attendants and terrorized the rest of the train.

In Philadelphia, Ground Zero for the new non-race riots, a liberal newspaper editor was hospitalized with a severely broken leg after 30 black people chased her and her friends into an alley and beat and robbed them. These 30 assailants were part of a crowd of more than a thousand black people on the streets creating mayhem.

As you can see, I am running out of ways to describe beating, robbing, looting, and other non-riot-like behavior.

For the next few days, the editor blogged that, despite the fact that the mob was black, race had nothing to do with the crime. And anyone who thought differently was creepy, she said.

After two years of denying that a tsunami of beatings and robberies in Philadelphia had anything to do with race, the black mayor of Philadelphia recently blasted the black rioters because they “damaged their own race.”

Standing next to him was the head of Philadelphia Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who said the mayor said what had to be said. The crimes were racial. The black web site Grio said the Mayor said what black people were thinking, but were afraid to say.

America is the most race conscious country in the world. That is easy to see every day in the newspapers with stories about black caucuses, black leaders, black unions, black teachers groups, black student groups, black awards.

Everything except hundreds and hundreds of cases of recent black mob violence — often targeted at women, gays and Asian immigrants.

Some of the biggest non-race riots happen in Miami Beach during Black Beach Week, in Indianapolis during the Black Expo, and in South Carolina during Black Bike Week.

Meanwhile, in El Paso, police are investigating white students for a hate crime after an eighth grade black classmate accused them of bullying. I know that was a crime of racial violence: I read it in the newspaper.

 

Colin Flaherty
Wilmington, Del.

 

 

0

Exorcise Blue Laws Once and for All

 

Any way you look at it, blue laws – which deliberately exist to enforce religious standards – are the end result of politics rather than logic, decency or good government. And any way you look at it, laws that exist because of politics are disgusting.

Southern and Midwestern states began passing laws to protect Sunday Sabbath during the 1800s, targeting saloon owners (those rascals!), sellers of pots and pans (scum of the earth!) Jews (later, the Nazis finally socked it to them!) and Seventh-Day Adventists (heaven forbid!), among other classes and groups. People were also arrested during those days of barbarism for blue-law violations such as  playing cards (sober or not!) or baseball (later nicknamed “America’s pastime”), and even fixing wagon wheels (the worst of all heathens!) on Sunday.

With the rationale being that people should be in church on Sunday, blue laws are expected to be found in religious cultures such as Israel, not in the U.S., where church and state clearly are Constitutionally intended to be separate.

If state-level politicians had gumption, Georgia’s prohibition of Sunday retail alcohol sales in stores would have been repealed long ago. Instead, the state cowardly decided this year to allow communities to vote on deciding the issue locally.

Outlawing retail alcohol sales on Sunday is as ridiculous as the government’s intrusion on liberty gets for two reasons: It enforces religious standards and it subverts commerce. As such, on Nov. 8, Albany and Dougherty voters should vote to repeal the local blue law prohibiting retail alcohol sales.

0

Campaign of Covetousness

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour’s.” (Exodus 20:17 KJV)

It is now evident that President Obama has laid the foundation for his 2012 re-election campaign. In 2008, it was Hope and Change. In 2012, it will be to make the wealthy pay their fair share and “spread the wealth around.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Don Cole
0

Baggy pants! Really?

 

I am Canadian reading about your ridiculous law by what must be a ridiculous local government, enforced by ridiculous law enforcement, and supported by your ridiculous municipal court.

Who on earth would visit such a place, let alone live!  This is so contrary to the very foundation on which your great county is based (For those that don’t know what I am writing about as clearly your officials don’t,  I’m referring to FREEDOM and your officials allowed a little more to be eroded in the name of an annoyance and $4,000-plus in city revenue.

Note to self and others, do not ever visit Albany.  There is a dress code!

PS: No, I have never worn baggy pants.

 

Ross Viner

Victoria, B.C.

1

Be commissioners, not politicians

If the garbage tax actually becomes practice in Lee County it shall necessitate a new agency within the tax collection department. The complexity of compiling and billing for garbage fees has proven to be beyond the ability of our commissioners. So, now they want to forward that job to the tax collector.

Read the rest of this entry »

0

It Takes a Village …

Our village seems to be broken. I am recently informed by an education association that 80 percent of children in kindergarten through fifth grade in America do not go to a church. How sad! And at once, how very frightening.

For measuring success, I am a firm believer in the method which considers that “the proof is in the pudding”. So, where is our proof that running our country without God is working successfully? Is the fact of our bigger homes, lots of technology, good food, and fancier clothes proof that we are succeeding? What goes on inside those bigger homes is the greatest divorce rate ever known, the highest crime rate in history, rampant dysfunctional parenthood, epidemic drug and alchohol addiction and a national degree of education in shambles.

All this follows on the heels of the greatest and longest uninterrupted period of prosperity in the history of our nation. If I was correctly informed that only 20 percent of our children attend a church, I believe it stands to reason that there is great danger that peer group pressure will cause that small pivot to diminish in size in our future. If so, then we must be doomed to experience more of what we are currently getting.

Take stock of your life at this moment. How do you like what you are getting? Can you describe your life as being filled by happiness, joy, and peace?  Do you want life to continue for you and your children exactly as it is today?
We turn out by the millions to vote for politicians who promise to make life better for us. But, we cannot turn out equally to educate ourselves and our children in the word of God. We have history (read a bible) to document the successful results of turning to God. We have the current state of our nation to document the result of dependency upon man. This past week, there were five pages of home foreclosure ads in the Lee County Ledger. These are not the kind of village conditions in which I want to live or see children experience. Yet, this is the result of hope and change promised to us by men.

We have been decieved many times by men, both well-meaning and not. Men do not have the power to provide happiness, joy, and peace. We have never been deceived by God. Shall we pass along a broken village to our children or shall we return to God who gave us the prosperity that we enjoyed in the past? I say we should stick with The Winner and return to including God in all our public affairs. He is easy to find. He’ll show up every time you ask Him in.

Herbert Gladin

Leesburg

 

 

0

Farmers may be next government victims

Coming to a farm near you: Commercial drivers licenses for tractor riding on your own land.

While most of us have been distracted with the debt ceiling issue for the last month or so, the rest of government has continued working on ways to make our life better.

Read the rest of this entry »

0

Transportation planning and funding

Congestion on our roads costs the U.S. an estimated $145 billion annually in wasted time, repairs and operating expenses. That’s an unnecessary burden that our economy is in no shape to carry.

Yet, Washington seems to be toying with short-term transportation plans and cuts to transportation funding. That’s no way to remedy America’s gridlock. Instead, Congress should pass a long-term (at least six years), well-funded surface transportation bill that allows for real road, bridge, rail and transit improvements.

New transportation projects will create thousands of new jobs in and of themselves, but that’s small potatoes compared to how improved transportation and logistics efficiency will boost our overall economic picture.

Our economy can’t grow, if cars and trucks can’t go. Tell your Congressman it’s time to get Georgia and the nation rolling again.

Sincerely,

William A. DiRico, Jr.
President – Southeast Division
Martin Marietta Materials

SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline