Letters for Aug. 6

Police don’t need military-style equipment

I’m all for public safety and giving our police the equipment needed to keep us safe; however, I object to spending our tax dollars on military-style equipment, which tends to increase tension and intimidate people rather than give them a sense of security. Over half a million dollars for an armored vehicle and ballistic helmets is ridiculous. We don’t live in a war zone, but if you put our officers in that kind of gear, they might start thinking we are.

Linda Greene

Spokane

Good trouble

As we recently honored John Lewis with a nationwide rally/protest July 17 and a local Freedom Friday one July 18, we have nine good examples of the “Good Trouble” he advocated – that is, nine Spokanites who were part of the June 11 protest at Spokane’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office were arrested for their acts of nonviolent civil disobedience that was the story of John Lewis’s life.

Will the actions of the “Spokane Nine” become the national model for what’s necessary to stop President Donald Trump’s extremely cruel, hateful, and racist deportation agenda?

Such selfless, dedicated action as nonviolent civil disobedience, possibly leading to jail time, may be necessary because this horrible Trump deportation agenda is illegal (lacking due process); loyally supported by most congressional Republicans, particularly our U.S. “Representative” Michael Baumgartner; very costly (e.g., $170.7 billion added by the misnomer One Big Beautiful Bill for deportation purposes); and brutally executed by Trump’s masked police force (ICE).

Norm Luther

Spokane

Removal of gray wolves

An affluent retired IT executive accuses Ferry County ranchers and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife of causing the unnecessary death of a Togo pack wolf in an Aug. 3 guest opinion (“The real problem isn’t the wolves – it’s us”). Ferry County, home of the Togo wolf pack, has one of the lowest median household incomes in the state. Cattle ranching is its main agricultural industry. Over several years, the pack has attacked and killed cattle causing hardship for the county’s residents. The loss of livestock to wildlife depredation is socially and economically damaging to ranchers responsible for their animals’ welfare.

Ranchers have additional operational expenses to discourage attacks on their livestock since the return of wolves to Washington. The WDFW does not kill wolves until nonlethal deterrents have repeatedly failed. Reed brings up a five-year-old incident and examples of out-of-state operations to allege WDFW and Ferry County ranchers are failing to prevent wolf attacks. At a workshop for Northeast Washington ranchers a few years ago, Hilary Zaranek-Anderson of Montana’s Tom Miner Basin peered up steep Kettle Mountains slopes and acknowledged the landscape might challenge her Tom Miner Basin deterrence techniques.

Occasional lethal removal of a gray wolf to mitigate social and economic losses has not impeded Washington’s wolf recovery. The Washington Wildlife First position that an individual animal trumps social, economic, and cultural rights of human communities, harms wildlife conservation partnerships and collaboration. I suspect the coexistence sought by Ferry County ranchers is for wolves to stop killing their livestock.

Kim Thorburn

Spokane