Use of force
There have been frequent reports of unarmed (or poorly armed) individuals being killed by policemen in recent years. Many of these victims were carrying only a knife, and some were mentally unstable. A possible solution to this “epidemic” of police killings might be to add to the armaments that policemen usually carry. If they were given a handgun that could fire shotgun-type shells containing pellets that would cause minor injury but considerable pain they could shoot their targets in the legs, and thereby immobilize them. Alternatively, the handguns that they normally carry could be loaded with one or two shells containing such pellets that would be discharged before lethal bullets entered the firing chamber.
Charles S. Nicoll, Lucerne
Postal service?
What is going on with the Postal Service? Three weeks ago, I was driving down Main Street and I see a postal worker pushing a three wheel cart full of mail. I was at the 4 way stop and as he stepped off the curb, he dropped a stack of mail out of his cart into the gutter. I rolled my window down and alerted him to the mail and he went back and retrieved it. Then last week, on three separate days, we received (at my business) someone else’s mail and this week, someone else’s mail twice. The person delivering our mail looks like he is on his way to a rock concert. No uniform or anything. What’s up?
Jeff Hansen, Lakeport
Lake mismanagement
I attended the Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee hearing April 14 in Sacramento, having been assured by Les Spahnn of Assemblyman Bill Dodd’s office and Alexander Ertel from Chairman Mark Levine’s office that the meeting was public and I would have three minutes to speak on the AB 367-Dodd, a bill to that would “appropriate $2.4 million dollars from the Fish and Game Preservation Fund in the state treasury to Lake County for the purpose of restoring Clear Lake Wetlands, maintaining the Lake Water Quality, and preventing invasive species.” I warned these officials I was traveling to attend the hearing.
I did not receive my three minutes to speak, but was cut off in the middle of my presentation.
I want to write here that the “serious problems Clear Lake is beset with” stem from mismanagement of the lake in the eyes of many of us who repeatedly attend the Board of Supervisors meetings and speak. In Lake County we do receive our three minutes, but there are those of us who often do not get attention or cooperation from supervisors who have been in their positions for more than one term.
I support AB 367, but I would like an accounting of how much money goes for what purpose, in consultation with the California Water Board, the Tribal governments, the state EPA, the federal EPA, the Department of Food and Agriculture that is in charge of abating hydrilla, the invasive weed in Clear Lake, and the State Regional Water Quality Control Board that declared Clear Lake an Impaired Body of Water due to nutrients and declared Clear Lake an Impaired Water Body due to mercury.
The people I talk to want to know when the state and the Lake County governments are going to look at run-off from the vineyards into water sources and how that runoff containing pesticides, fertilizers, etc affects the nutrient load and water quality.
It hurts to see frost protection sprinklers in vineyards using up water that may be necessary to have to make it through the summer.
Last summer there were dry wells in Lake County. How do we solve these problems together?
Joan Moss, Lakeport
