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Officer Friendly

Dear Ms. Pailca,

I am not filing a complaint with this letter. I simply wish to document a call I received from [Seattle Police Officer's] Guild President Ken Saucier last night, June 26.

Mr. Saucier called me regarding my letter to the editor regarding his warnings--which I characterize as threats--of de-policing if the City of Seattle should undertake the data collection on racial profiling authorized by the City Council and now up to the Mayor to approve.

The call was not at all polite from Mr. Saucier's side. He engaged in name calling and derision of my character and motivations in questioning the police in Seattle. On a number of occasions he demanded I "shut up and listen" even though it was nearly impossible for me to complete a sentence without him interrupting. Among other things he accused me of having "the attention span of a cat" and not having the intelligence to be skeptical enough to question newspaper accounts saying I must also believe children's books such as "The Cat In the Hat" or "Green Eggs And Ham" are true too.

For the record, I believe Mr. Saucier's problem with my remarks in the paper are two fold:

1. He claims that he did not use the word "de-policing" when speaking with the reporter from the P-I.

2. He claims he has not warned or threatened the City of Seattle with "de-policing". I believe he states his position to be (he promised to send it in writing and has not): "In Cincinnati and other major cities that have undertaken racial profiling data collection there has been a drop off in discretionary policing activity--which some would call de-policing--and he does not want to see this happen in the City of Seattle."

On Mr. Saucier's first point I will defer to his second point. It is my opinion that when the President of the Seattle Police Officers Guild says: "he does not want to see this happen", in reference to de-policing it is the same thing as warning--and in my lexicon--threatening that the members of his Guild will engage in this behavior.

When confronted with my counter position and with the fact the Mayor had sent him a letter similarly stating the Mayor's concern with de-policing remarks made by Mr. Saucier--saying that de-policing will not be tolerated--he remarked: "So a cynical person would ask: `How is he going to enforce that?'" I pointed out to Mr. Saucier that this sounded like a reiteration of the de-policing threat in that he was challenging the Mayor to catch his officers engaged in de-policing practices that they would employ.

Again, I am not filing a complaint about this call. It is understandable that Mr. Saucier would be upset and want to deride me personally. Even though I found the conversation to be unprofessional and a bit intimidating given Mr. Saucier's position as President of the Guild, I merely want the conversation to be documented.

Sincerely,

Tony Granillo, Commissioner, Seattle Human Rights Commission

The Seattle Times Wouldn't Print This

I'm amazed at the narrowness of the letters that have been run in the Seattle Times.

The reason Officer Herzog died is that the police have become the one size fill all "gap-fillers" for the cuts in our society's safety net. These cuts mean that police must deal with homeless, unemployed and mentally ill, and others, all in numbers they never had to before. If the cop's job is more dangerous and unpredictable than it was a decade or so earlier, this is why. If a support system had been in place for Matthews, he and Herzog need probably never have met.

Compounding this is political pressures that have resulted in hiring too many cops too quickly. LA Chief Bob Vernon notes this in his book "L.A. Justice." Philadelphia Chief Ed Timoney notes this in his interview with Esquire magazine. Both note these new hires have brought a drop in training and a lowering of hiring standards.

The real villains here are not the mentally ill, but those who've been cutting the safety net for their own short-term profit, then forcing law enforcement to fill in the gaps.

The safety net of social services needs to be rebuilt, so police can be returned to their correct function.

I can think of nothing that would be more "pro-cop."

Paul Richmond, Attorney at Law, Ballard

I do not Pledge Allegiance

I am just a 17-year-old boy from Grapevine, Texas; I do not know who to talk to; I do not know how to make my voice heard; but here is my first attempt. I sit at dinner with my father and watch the Pledge of Allegiance controversy escalate and, despite supposedly objective reporting, the concept continually comes across that the court was erroneous in ruling the "under god" line as unconstitutional. I hear people spouting "Tradition! Tradition!" and it galls me that people do not acknowledge the glaring oversights in their arguments.

So the Pledge of Allegiance was introduced to American schools after Pearl Harbor; so the line "...under god" was added to underscore the difference between communist USSR and capitalist USA; so what? I hear reporters and yokels all talking about the sacrosanctity of our national heritage; but does something become exempt from the rules and regulations countless people have died to ensure, merely because it has existed for X amount of years? Whether it is popular or not, the Pledge of Allegiance as it stands now is a clear violation of one of the principles we hold sacred in our country, the separation of church and state.

The idea behind the ruling is that it is unconstitutional to force students, with their right hands over their hearts, to acclaim god for the state of the country. I watch President Bush come on the television and say that the ruling is unjust because it tears away at the very foundation of America, that we are a nation founded on and devoted to "God-given" rights and we must thank the Almighty for them. No! Our country was based on the freedoms inherent to humanity; freedoms we should all enjoy, and among those is the freedom of religion which allows you to choose to practice your religion, if you practice one at all; to acclaim to a god if you have one; and the right to not do so if you do not.

The tenure of our Pledge does not empower the educational and governmental system to coerce students into swearing to a god they do not believe in their allegiance. Now the judge in California has been so intimidated that he has decreed no one should enforce his decision as a "clear sign that the ruling will be overturned." And the schools that were in question in the first place are flouting the courts by continuing to force students to recite the Pledge. The principals claim that it is un-American to stop saying "under god" in the pledge and will continue to do so until someone makes them stop.

Excuse me, but is it not more un-American to deny the authority of the courts, to deliberately transgress the laws that have been mandated by judiciaries we have constitutionally empowered to make them? Is it not stepping out of our moral bounds to say that we have more jurisdiction than the courts and that we do not need to comply with their dicta? They who oppose the ruling are un-American, they are unpatriotic.

I have had problems with the forced recitation of the Pledge all my life. I find it morally reprehensible to brainwash elementary school students into patriotism by forcing them to promise every day something they don't understand. Some may say that no one forces us to say it, but they do. I have a clearer recollection than most, being 17 and a long-time opponent to the pledge.

You were punished for not standing when the Pledge came over the announcements, you were punished for not putting your right hand over your heart, you were punished for not looking at the flag, you were punished for not reciting it correctly. The more I think about it the more I see that the youth of America is being Skinnerized, operantly conditioned to become patriotic, god-loving citizens.

I have no problem with the religious thanking God for their country, I have no problem with the patriotic pledging their undying regard for the country. I do, however, have a serious problem with forcing men who do not believe in God to thank Him for their country, with forcing prepubescent students who have no concept of what patriotism is to pledge their patriotism. I can no longer stand idly by and allow the frothing masses to popularly constrain and overturn a legitimate ruling merely to uphold tradition.

The ruling should not be overturned. It is legitimate, it is correct, and it needs to be enforced. I cannot sit by and allow my country to ignore its own laws and regulations for the sake of tradition.

Sincerely,

--Phillip Hill, Grapevine TX

An Open Letter to John

John, John, John, you've got your priorities all wrong. While men fly airplanes into skyscrapers, dive bomb the Pentagon, while they stick explosives into their shoes, and then book a seat right next to us, while they hide knives in their luggage, steal kids on school buses, take little girls from their beds at night, drive trucks into our state capitol buildings, while our president calls dangerous men all over the world evildoers and devils, while we live in the threat of biological warfare, nuclear destruction, annihilation...you are out buying yardage to save Americans from the appalling, alarming, abominable aluminum alloy of evil...that terrible ten foot tin tittie.

You might not be able to find bin Laden. But you sure as hell found the hooter in the Hall of Justice.

It's not that we aren't grateful. But while we were begging the women of Afghanistan to not cover up their faces, you were begging your staff members to just cover up that nipple to save the American people from that monstrous metal mammary.

How can we ever thank you? So, in your office every morning in your secret prayer meeting, while an American woman is sexually assaulted every six seconds, while anthrax floats around the post office and settles in the chests of senior citizens...you've got another chest on your mind. While American sons arrive home in body bags and heat seeking missiles fly around a foreign country looking for any warm body...

...you think of another body.

And you pray for the biggest bra in the world, John, because you see, that breast on the Spirit of Justice is in the spirit of your own inhibited sexuality.

And when we women see our grandmothers, our mothers, our daughters, our granddaughters, our sisters, ourselves...when we women see that statue, the Spirit of Justice, we see the spirit of strength and the spirit of survival. While every day we view innocent bodies dragged out of rubble, and women and children laid out like thin limp dolls and baptized into death as collateral damage, and the hollow-eyed Afghani mother's milk has dried up underneath her burka in famine, in shame, and her children are dead at her breast.

While you look at that breast, John, that jug on the Spirit of Justice and deal with your thoughts of lust and sex and nakedness, we see it as a testimony to motherhood...and you see it as a tit.

It's not the money it cost. It's the message you send. We've got the right to live in freedom. We've got the right to cheat Americans out of millions of dollars and then just not want to tell Congress about it. We've got the right to drop bombs night and day on a small country that has no army, no navy, no military at all, because we've got the right to bear arms, but we just better not even think about the right to bare breasts.

So now, John, you can be photographed while you stand there and talk about guns and bombs and poisons without the breast appearing over your right shoulder, without that bodacious bosom bothering you, and we just wanted to tell you in the spirit of justice, in the spirit of truth:

John, there is still one very big boob left standing there in that picture.

--Claire Braz-Valentine, forwarded via e-mail