Letters

Misplaced Loyalty

Stephen Downing’s article (page one) made my heart sink. I agree with everything he says. My experiences with the Police Department have been disturbing at best. We asked them to investigate the possible domestic violence case against Jeannine Pearce and they covered it up. (the LA District Attorney’s office did not)

They gave her a large bottle of water and waited 1-1/2 hours before administering a Breathalizer test. When it was all done, they claimed the equipment wasn’t working. Really? I bet if you were pulled over, that test would have been just fine

We have drunken, vicious, cruel and dangerous men in the department now. The department knows of it and they will do nothing. I blame a culture of entitlement, privilege and arrogance. I blame a police chief who is ultimately in charge and who will not do anything. He is the captain of the boat and will not take the wheel.

I blame the Police Officers Association, which was so corrupt under Steve James that the smell of graft permiated City Hall and every Council District. I guess you all have forgotten why Dan Baker was thrown out of the city for his illegal dealings with Steve James, but I have not fogotten. Now his “protege” has taken his corrupt seat and the same old duck and cover is in force.

Citizens have no incentive to work with corrupt officers. Why should they?

I am waiting to get pulled over by one of their violent thugs. I will fight them like the devil and it will make front page headlines. So I challenge the police department to threaten me just once. I know what you are capable of. Do you know what I am capable of?

As a leader of our community, I have never stood by and let bad things just happen. I am not going to tolerate the erosion of rights, the illegal actions of our law enforcement agency and the turning of Long Beach into a frightened police state.

It is time for reform.

That starts with the termination of the police chief. And don’t tell me how nice he is. I can assure you any dictator was considered “nice” by some. Actions are the language of truth.

We need to move ahead into a new “community policing” where citizens are unafraid and the doors to all police stations are open to its citizens. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Robert Fox

Running Out of Time

As you know by now earthquake regulations by the state of California mandate that hospitals need to be seismically safe. A deadline of June 30, 2019, was placed on Community Hospital to achieve this because the back part of the hospital is on a fault line, the same one that runs all along Pacific Coast Highway from the traffic circle to Seal Beach. This is considered an “active” fault line because by definition there has been an earthquake on this fault within the last 11,000 years.

MemorialCare, which operates Community Hospital, announced that they will close the hospital by July 3, 2018. This is one year sooner than they need to or that is required by the state of California. They have been approached about why they need to close it one year sooner than need be and the grave impact this will have. The reason cited is confusing: “We are closing one year earlier because ever since we announced that we will be closing the hospital’s staff are starting to leave.” This is odd because no physicians have left and there is an endless source of nurses. The closure is taking place rapidly making it strategically difficult to get a new operator on time. Having a new operator would be great for the hospital and the people of east and central Long Beach but understandably not a welcome competitor to the established hospitals of Long Beach.

Last week MemorialCare made the official announcement of the closure date. They mentioned that they will be able to handle the overload from East Long Beach. What is odd is that their emergency room tonight is closed and diverting all patients to other hospitals because they are filled up. Now this is happening even with Community Hospital’s emergency room still open. Imagine what would happen if the emergency room at Community was already closed.

 I am informed that, St. Mary’s, Lakewood Regional and Los Alamitos are [often] filled up. When this scenario occurs, which is often, patients are usually taken to further away hospitals as in Norwalk and Downey. By the way the extra time taken by the fire department transporting people to faraway places leaves the citizens of East Long Beach that much longer without emergency fire and paramedic services.

The east side of Long Beach needs an emergency room. This should never be taken away. It puts everyone at risk. I thought the mission and objective of hospitals was to help people.

E Mike Vasilomanolakis, MD

Stop the Anger

Since my first trip to the ballot box in 1960, I have voted in every presidential and gubernatorial election until 2016. I chose not to vote for either of the major party presidential candidates in the recent election because I feel that neither are capable of doing the job properly or effectively.

According to Taylor Ramsey in his letter “Stop the anger”(Mar. 2), both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump “have faults,” but after declaring that he “won’t go into either of their many faults,” he then launches into an enumeration of many reasons for castigating anyone who might have voted for Hillary Clinton, who, among other listed transgressions, “has a history of destroying women.”

Exactly how are these statements (whether factual or non-factual) supposed to bring us closer to stopping anger? Yes, Mr. Ramsey, we all have our faults, but not all of us are running for president of the U.S. And yes, opinions from both sides of the political spectrum are coming under increasingly fierce and “unfriendly” attack, which weakens us as a nation.

However, attempting to single out either “conservative opinion or liberal opinion as not being quite as tolerated or more unsafe” than other opinions is not going to move this great country closer to where it desperately needs to be. If any opinion is unsafe, no opinion will be safe in these United States of America.

At this critical point in U.S. history, we Americans need to be willing to attempt to both give and receive much more tolerance, That said, a good place to start is by trying our best to dispense it ourselves.

David M. Bouchier