Aurora police department needs a reset
Re: “ ‘It was done wrong’ Aug. 5 news story
I am so tired of Aurora being in the national news — in a bad way.
Why have there been multiple incidents of police misconduct with no one facing consequences? How can anyone defend police pulling over an SUV with Colorado plates (and a family inside), when it was a motorcycle with Montana plates that was being sought? How can anyone defend police terrorizing innocent children and their mother/aunt and refusing to check her registration?
This would not have happened to a white family. This is racist behavior, and it has to stop!
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman has not stepped up to the challenge. The police chief keeps apologizing but not holding police accountable. And how powerful is the police union? Is that what is hanging up the works? Does the state of Colorado have to step in on every incident in order to get action?
It’s time for Aurora and other police departments to reorganize. Learn from Camden, N.J., where several years back, they created new rules for the department, made everyone reapply for jobs, and retrained them.
Is it perfect? No. Is it better? Yes. From what I’ve read, relations between the police and community are much improved.
If the police union is the problem, then the government of Aurora needs to shut them out and start over. Their time of defending bad cops has to end now. They need to go back to their code to protect the citizens. Not cover each others’ behinds.
Sondra Singer, Lakewood
On civil disobedience
In 1849, Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “Resistance to Civil Government,” was a call for resistance to unjust laws created by the government. His ideas gained favor with Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil disobedience is relevant today. Thoreau claims that the best method for fighting injustice is through passive disobedience. A person must refuse to cooperate with injustice. Violent resistance is destined for failure. A government is too formidable for one individual to resist, but a dedicated group refusing to cooperate can triumph and defeat injustice.
Protesters must expect violence by the authorities and must not retaliate. Protesters must be educated in advance on how to react to arrest and attack. The organizers of Black Lives Matter and other protests have failed. The protest organizers should appoint cadres of volunteers who check protesters when they arrive for any objects used as projectiles and confiscated. Leaflets should remind protesters of the rules. By definition, civil disobedience must be nonviolent before it’s called “civil.”
Ken Spooner, Littleton
Extend the $600 unemployment stipend
Re: “The time for $600 stipend has come and gone…” Aug. 2 commentary
Does Krista Kafer have any idea why the federal government has provided an additional $600 a week on top of the regular unemployment benefits? It’s not to reward or encourage laziness as she implies. The unemployment compensation is being used to funnel money into a stalled economy.
We need people to stay home for the same reason we need some businesses and schools to close for a while. It’s to reduce the contagion. And we need them to stay home to care for their children staying home from unopened schools.
If the $600 stops, then Kafer’s experience liquidating estates will serve her well with all the evictions and foreclosures that will follow.
Paul Brown, Denver
Krista Kafer’s smug column calling for an end to enhanced unemployment benefits echos Ivanka Trump’s recent tone-deaf praise for the “Find Something New” project.
She refers to continued benefits as “paid vacation,” assumes “quite a few of the 330,000 Coloradans” receiving benefits are making more money unemployed than they were while employed and suggests that those who “complain” about a lack of jobs should find the courage to make “difficult changes” by seeking another line of work.
It is ludicrous to suggest that workers who may lack transportation, child care, family support, reserve funds, or a sound educational background can realistically transition to new jobs, even if there were 330,000 openings in Colorado.
However, if her goal is to agitate people by claiming that tens of millions of unemployed Americans in the midst of a historic economic crisis are taking advantage of the rest of us, Kafer’s message makes sense. Taxpayers, don’t ask for transparency for the trillions that have gone to corporations, cronies of the administration and congress, and other dubious recipients. Instead, be on the lookout for COVID Welfare Queens.
Bonnie Arnold Wenngren, Centennial
We’ve already burdened our teachers enough
Re: “Five reasons to open schools,” Aug. 2 commentary
As the mother of a 30-year old teacher, I cannot support your position that schools should be reopened in less than a month for in-person instruction.
We do not pay our teachers enough or offer them enough respect to send them into battle on the frontlines of the pandemic.
I recognize that it is difficult for some families to supervise learning at home while one or both parents are also trying to work from home, that some students are disadvantaged because of a lack of home resources, and that “falling behind” is a problem for many.
These are not problems that we should put on the backs of our teachers or ask them to be responsible for solving.
We need to have societal solutions that we, as taxpayers and humans, are prepared to devise, fund and implement.
While only 30 years old, my son is not at high risk for coronavirus. But his life partner is. If he is forced to return to in-person teaching, he will have to move out of his home, and find an apartment or other accommodation because he will not put her life at risk.
Would you — or those supporting in-person learning — like to pay his rent expenses for the next 9 months so that he does not become a threat to his partner’s health?
Elizabeth Steele, Denver
Sadly columnist Vincent Carroll didn’t think things through.
My cousin is an experienced and dedicated elementary teacher, in classrooms with no windows (therefore dependent on the school’s HVAC system for un-virus-tainted air), and a single mother dependent on help from her nearby grandmother who is at high COVID-19 risk from respiratory challenges. The students could easily become asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers, putting the grandmother at risk via her daughter and the rest of the family at risk, including other high-risk elders.
That said, my cousin was dissatisfied with the on-line learning processes at the end of last year. Too many parents were not ready to make that work
for their children. She’d love to get
back to the more effective in-person teaching, but not at risk of her family members.
To open schools because students or teachers are unlikely to become severely ill themselves is absurdly short-sighted. As with any public policy, the whole systems in play need to be well understood and respected.
Christopher Juniper, Denver
More equitable than taxing fuel
Re: “At last, a plan to address Colorado’s crumbling roads,” Aug. 2 commentary
The problem has persisted for years, and an obvious (to me) potential funding source to alleviate the problem has been overlooked in everything I’ve read.
Taxing fuel has given electric vehicle owners a “free” ride, and hybrid vehicle owners a discounted ride, but those vehicles all roll on tires!
Let’s tax the tires (and recaps) at the point of sale.
Large, heavy vehicles cause more wear on the roads and roll on larger, more expensive tires: smaller, lighter vehicles cause less wear and roll on smaller, less expensive tires.
Studded snow tires cause additional wear.
Certainly, the “experts” can come up with some taxing formula, with a surcharge for studs, based on dollar cost, or tire size, or load weight rating, or tread wear mileage, or some combination of these or other factors, to equitably distribute the financial burden based on the anticipated impact on the roadways that the tires will have when mounted on motor vehicles and trailers.
Bottom line: We have to pay for roadway maintenance and construction — let’s fund it based on how heavily our vehicles will impact those roadways.
Michael N. Shapiro, Denver
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