Police jobs harder than you think

11/9/2012

Once again, you have dis­played a bias against Ot­tawa Hills in your Oct. 31 ed­i­to­rial “Need for change.”

The prem­ise seems to be that be­cause there have been three in­ci­dents — none of which were fa­tal — over the past 14 years and the vil­lage’s po­lice de­part­ment has not made ma­jor changes in train­ing, the po­lice force is un­pro­fes­sional and un­pre­pared.

You sug­gest that cross-train­ing with the Toledo Po­lice Depart­ment might be ben­e­fi­cial. This would be the TPD whose of­fi­cers in less than three years killed an un­armed man, shot a fel­low of­fi­cer, killed a men­tally ill woman who bran­dished scis­sors, and killed a men­tally ill man who bran­dished a metal pipe. This is not meant to crit­i­cize Toledo po­lice, but to demon­strate a clear dou­ble stan­dard by The Blade.

Po­lice work is dan­ger­ous and dif­fi­cult. I am thank­ful for peo­ple who will­ing to do the tough work and make the split-sec­ond de­ci­sions that are part of of­fi­cers’ jobs. How pleas­ant it must be for you to pro­nounce judg­ment from your easy chairs.

DAVID BAEHREN

Ot­tawa Hills

 

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Use U.S. oil to aid our na­tion first

While I wel­come the news about the pos­si­bil­ity of the United States be­com­ing a ma­jor pro­ducer of oil, I re­mem­ber the bill of goods the Amer­i­can peo­ple were sold back in the 1970s with the Alas­kan oil pipe­line (“U.S. poised to be­come big­gest oil pro­ducer; Pro­duc­tion soon could pass Saudis,” Oct. 24).

Claims of en­ergy in­de­pen­dence were made then, and yet the price of oil con­tin­ued to rise. I’m not go­ing to deny the com­pa­nies that paid for the pipe­line to make an hon­est profit, but at whose ex­pense?

Oil pro­duc­tion in the United States should first ben­e­fit the peo­ple of Amer­ica, not the high­est bid­der in coun­tries that take away Amer­i­can jobs.

If leg­is­la­tion has to be put forth to en­force this pol­icy of Amer­ica first, then our law­mak­ers need to stand up for their con­stit­u­ents, not their deep-pocket do­nors, and do what’s right for this coun­try.

BOB FOTOPLES

Ore­gon

 

World de­mand af­fects gas prices

Retail gas­o­line prices of the last sum­mer were the high­est in his­tory, de­spite an in­crease in U.S. oil pro­duc­tion.

Our de­pen­dency upon for­eign oil has de­creased from roughly 60 per­cent to 40 per­cent over the last four years, the low­est level in al­most 20 years.

Mean­while, prod­ucts from U.S. re­fin­er­ies are sold on the open mar­ket to other coun­tries as well as do­mes­ti­cally.

It is that open world mar­ket, sup­ply and de­mand, and oil com­pa­nies right­ful de­sire to max­i­mize prof­its for their own share­hold­ers that by and large de­ter­mines the price at our pumps.

MICHAEL O’DONNELL

Syl­va­nia

 

Gas price jump spurs ques­tion

How come there never seems to be an in­ves­ti­ga­tive ar­ti­cle in The Blade when the price of gas­o­line jumps by 30 cents a gal­lon at once, like it did late last month?

RONALD MORELLI

Tem­per­ance