Police actually face harsher punishments

To the editor:

In response to Saturday’s anti-police letter from Judy Buck of Henderson:

Just a quick bit of information on those officers that you personally pay the salaries of: When officers take the job, they don’t sign away their constitutional rights as U.S. citizens, whereby they are afforded due process and entitled to be considered innocent until proved guilty.

Although the administrative process of internal investigations skirt around officers’ rights by compelling them to talk under the threat of being fired, technically, officers are treated the same until it gets down to the punishment phase. As a civilian citizen arrested for DUI, you face jail time, DMV punishment and insurance punishment, but the police don’t go to your job at Blockbuster and tell on you to make certain that you get fired or that your paycheck gets docked for an entire week or two.

Officers face the same punishment as a civilian up to the job part, where pay is docked, assignments are changed or – depending on the severity – they’re fired.

So don’t worry, Ms. Buck, those cops whose paychecks you personally sign are “getting their fair share” and a little more.

JOEL KNAPP

LAS VEGAS

Stadium benefits

To the editor:

As a Clark County School District alumnus, former UNLV attendee and current Ph.D. student at Clemson University, I am concerned about Henry Soloway’s Jan. 16 letter, “Stadium looks like another boondoggle.”

Mr. Soloway argues money shouldn’t be spent on the construction of an on-campus football stadium at UNLV. But Mr. Soloway did little to contribute to the dialogue about whether using tax money toward an on-campus stadium – instead of on academics – is permissible.

Rather than form an opinion based on Mr. Soloway’s “hunch” that a new stadium will not influence the academic quality of UNLV, I would encourage readers to form their own attitudes from research-based investigations such as “Intercollegiate Athletics and Student College Choice” by J. Douglas Toma and Michael Cross, or “From Kickoff to Commencement” by F.G. Mixon and L.J. Trevino. I assure you these aren’t the “paid lobbyists” Mr. Soloway referred to in his letter.

Time and time again, researchers have demonstrated that quality athletic programs influence more students to apply to these universities, leading to more selective admissions criteria and increasing the quality of the university as a whole.

Second, Mr. Soloway’s comments that Clemson University and Auburn University are “second-tier colleges that are really professional football teams, with teaching a very distant priority” are completely off-base and somewhat comic. In fact, U.S. News & World Report just ranked Clemson as the 25th best public university in the nation (UNLV’s ranking was unpublished). This year, Clemson received its most competitive pool of incoming freshmen – approximately 52 percent of entering freshman were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.

Mr. Soloway’s opinions lack merit.

MATTHEW DELLA SALA

LAS VEGAS

Volunteers

To the editor:

Art Gisi’s Jan. 16 letter, “Arming teachers,” was excellent. I have been thinking along the same lines, but with an added feature: My thoughts are to ask for teachers to volunteer to apply for concealed weapon permits, paid for by the school, and reward them with a salary increase of, say, $25 a month.

I would think many teachers would jump at the thought of the extra income. Anyone with thoughts of staging a massacre at such a school would surely have second thoughts.

JAMES STORM

LAS VEGAS

Anti-gun nuts

To the editor:

What kind of a disgusting mind takes joy in the death of another? Rick Reynolds’ “Win-win-win” letter of Jan. 14, describing his approval of the hypothetical shooting of an NRA member acting as a school guard, was a repugnant example of liberal emotional thinking.

To learn that my grandchildren were murdered inside a Clark County school would be devastating. But it would also be maddening if it turned out they were not better protected because of an anti-gun-nut mentality.

RICHARD LAIRD

LAS VEGAS

Taxing us?

To the editor:

We knew it would happen, and now it has. Liberals who drank the Kool-Aid and voted the Democrats back in are the loudest complainers about their tax-and-spend policies, which have now crash-landed on the backs of the middle class. I guess we are wealthier than we thought.

We warned you in this forum. What? You don’t read the letters to the editor? Pity.

BETH BROWN

LAS VEGAS

Prohibitions don’t work

To the editor:

I find it disheartening and alarming that the president and many in Congress, as well as many well-meaning citizens, think the answer to all of our problems is a federal law to control everything.

In 1974, I predicted in my master’s thesis, “The Politics of Narcotics,” that the war on drugs would be unsuccessful and that it would only lead to more involvement by criminals, street gangs, etc. That didn’t exhibit a great ability to foresee the future. It was simply looking at the past. Prohibition failed, we’ve never been able to control prostitution (except in the legal houses in Nevada), and controlling drugs has been an utter failure.

I think I can safely predict that such a gun control law would be just as successful as the wars on drugs, alcohol and prostitution. By definition, criminals don’t follow the law. Why do we keep repeating the mistakes of the past while expecting different results? And this is only for the enforcement side. Don’t get me started on the Second Amendment!

ART CLAYTON

HENDERSON

Double dipper

To the editor:

I just read Jane Ann Morrison’s Jan. 14 column (“After FBI career, special agent heads to fairways”) about the retired FBI Special Agent in Charge Kevin Favreau, who got a job at the nonprofit organization First Tee of Southern Nevada.

At first I thought, “How nice. A man with a really good government pension is helping the kids.Great.” Then it turns out that he is just another pig at the trough. He gets $60,000 a year to “help,” and Ms. Morrison says “you won’t need to worry that the money isn’t going where it should.” Of course not, because the boss is a typical double dipper.

Then Mr. Favreau says volunteers are needed. He doesn’t “volunteer” to help, but you can. Pitiful.

RONALD E. MEYER

LAS VEGAS