Trust of the community key for the police

To the editor:

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department may be “fighting a war” with regard to public perception right now (and your recent series of “Cop 101” stories on the police academy probably didn’t help), but we are not “fighting a war.” Professional American soldiers are fighting wars — professional civilian police officers must keep their focus on serving and protecting our communities and taking steps to maintain trust.

Yes, at times we do need to use deadly force to protect citizens and ourselves, but, thankfully, we have had only three police officers killed by criminals while on duty in Southern Nevada in the past 25 years. Police training, tactics and equipment have improved. The overall quality of our officers has probably improved as well, and we will strive to maintain our safety record as we deal with criminals who are reported to be worse today than two or three decades ago.

As police professionals, we need to maintain the confidence and support of our community to move forward — and indoctrinating new officers to think that they are fighting a war needs to be put into proper context. We serve close to 2 million law-abiding citizens who live in Southern Nevada, and we need them to trust us — and that includes standing up to criticism. We can’t expect that every police use of deadly force is going to be accepted by the community, or even by the district attorney’s office.

I’m bothered, even embarrassed, by the some things I have read and the way some things have been portrayed in the “Cop 101” series in the Review-Journal. I’ve been through the Metro academy two times (once in 1983 and again in 2004 when I was 43 years of age). When I completed the entire police academy for the second time, I had already been a lieutenant for four years and had been a sergeant for four years before that. I had also been a police chief for more than three years before returning to Las Vegas.

I’m proud to have completed “Cop 101” both times because I want to serve and protect this community. I also think it is critically important for our safety as we go on duty each shift that we maintain the community support that we have had in the past!

I’m very proud to be a member of Metro, but I’m not fighting a war, and I don’t think the vast majority of experienced members of the department want our taxpayers and supporters to think we are training our officers to go to “war” in our community.

Norman Jahn

Las Vegas

Great programs

To the editor:

Social Security and Medicare remain by far our greatest social policy achievements. They prevent old-age poverty — and workers paid for it, up front, via the payroll tax. It isn’t welfare.

Are you surprised that these programs are under attack now? The same forces that went after organized labor (unions) in the 1980s, that relentlessly pushed free trade agreements in the 1990s, allowing manufacturing to move overseas and jobs to evaporate here, and that destroyed housing values in the 2000s, will be on the prowl again in 2011.

Social Security and Medicare, they think, are easy prey once the American people have been softened up by scare stories about how these two programs are on the “brink of bankruptcy” and we can’t afford them. It isn’t true.

The attack on Social Security and Medicare will come when the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission recommends a direct cut in benefits, targeted in an especially nasty way at all Americans who work harder, earn less and live shorter lives after retirement than senators and congressmen.

GERARD A. SANCHEZ SR.

LAS VEGAS

GOP dinosaurs

To the editor:

Pat Buchanan’s Dec. 23 commentary on the military and gays was an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has taken the time to think about, and learn about, the recent repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” legislation implemented during the Clinton presidency.

Inappropriately, Mr. Buchanan begins his rant against the legislation that allows gays to openly join the ranks of the U.S. military without hiding or concealing their sexual proclivities by comparing the abuses of some members of the Catholic priesthood with the terrible things that could happen now that gays are allowed in.

It’s a cheap shot, a low blow — not only because it is imaginative nonsense, but also because Mr. Buchanan himself is a Catholic and should know that abuses do not define the church anymore than legislation allowing gays will define our military forces.

Another fact Mr. Buchanan completely ignores is that there are gays in the military now, and somehow, not surprisingly, that circumstance has not reduced the efficiency of U.S. armed forces.

Here is a question for all those opposed to gays in the military: Why should heterosexuals be the only ones who are permitted to die for their country?

It is time for dinosaurs like Mr. Buchanan and the right wing to change their logo from the elephant to the mastodon.

J.H. ESPERIAN

LAS VEGAS