Letters for June 27, 2024
Questions for Spokane police chief candidates
On Thursday in the Central Library, a “meet and greet” of the four candidates for the new Spokane police chief will occur. The public would like to know what the new chief of police thinks about the following:
Do you think maintaining the current SPD policy on the “use of force” is a priority? Are improvements warranted?
Where does the candidate stand on diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring and advancement?
What improvements may be necessary in the use of body cameras?
Do you favor augmenting and advancing SPD’s successful mental health worker drive-along program?
What do you say at a public meeting when the question of “defunding the police” is leveled?
Considering public safety is Mayor Brown’s highest priority, and presuming your number one priority is maintaining staff capacity, where would you make a 12% one-year spending cut?
Is overtime pay essentially “off your table” in an austere world? If so, how will you manage workforce demand?
Accountability, legitimacy, transparency and trust are critical for addressing community support. How would you order them in priority to meet your management expectations?
Should SPD be “in charge” of the homeless issue?
Do you support a robust police ombudsman program?
Howard Braham
Spokane Valley
A very special thank you to Sunshine Recycle
Someone living in the Eagle Pointe Apartments dumped their garbage in the street on East Jackson in front of my home. I refused to clean up the garbage not knowing what kind of needles or drugs I could have encountered. I called Crime Check, Waste Management among others and got no help at all. I drove to Sunshine and explained to them I was worried about a dog or cat being drawn to the garbage and being hit while in the middle of the road. I offered them $10 to clean up the mess because I was getting nowhere. They did not want my $10 and said they would be right there to clean it. They were there within 10 minutes. My special thanks to Foreman Joe and his crew. There are still some good people in town! Thanks again.
Barbara Howard
Spokane Valley
Driving age restrictions prevent accidents
Regarding the semi/car wreck that closed the freeway at the Thor/Freya exit the other day: What is a 79-year-old doing driving a semi in the first place? Aren’t there any age restrictions that keep such vehicles out of the hands of drivers that old? (And just for the records, I am in my 70s, so I’m not discriminating) It is a wonder that no one was killed in that wreck, but it seems to me with some saner driving rules, it would never have happened in the first place.
Bob Schatz
Spokane
Stop the cull of barred owls in the Northwest
Kudos to Hilary Franz, commissioner of public lands for Washington state, for speaking out against a federal scheme to kill up to 500,000 barred owls in the forests of the Pacific Northwest in a letter she sent this week to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, explaining this plan is a costly, unworkable and a far-fetched strategy to protect threatened spotted owls from inter-species competition in old-growth forests.
The kill-plan has a price tag of nearly a quarter-billion dollars; it will swallow up funds for workable endangered species recovery programs.
Covering a physical geography of perhaps 20 million acres, including 17 national forests, the plan devised by U.S. Fish and Wildlife is a pipe dream. Nothing will stop surviving owls from recolonizing open nesting sites. The government will be on a forest-owl-shooting treadmill that never slows down. As Commissioner Franz notes, “There is no precedent for a successful wildlife-control program of this scale.”
Commissioner Franz notes the barred owl “cull” will be the largest raptor slaughter the world has ever known. Our federal wildlife agency must abandon this ill-conceived scheme
Jennifer McCausland
Seattle