Letters to the Editor

Blacks Not Promoted

Fabulous history of this problem! [LBPD Does Not Promote Black Women, 3/29/21] I knew several of the officers in your report and I considered them the best.

Karen Hilburn

Thank you for your in-depth article. I enjoyed reading it and the information that it disclosed. I am saddened to see that the racial discrimination has not changed much at all.

Shirley A Burney was a personal friend of mine and I met her not too long after she was promoted to [an officer] on the graveyard shift. Boy , did things change in her life.

I just recently found out that she passed about three years ago; may she rest in peace.

Linda Kamara-Kay

Thank you for this article, Mr. Downing. This comes as no surprise and can be seen throughout the department. I have known some of the people who work at LBPD for years and talk to them on and off. Sadly, the faces of the officers and the people who have higher ranks do not reflect the faces of the community.

One of the black female supervisors who worked in their records department had a master’s degree and was able to be an acting administrator, but not the administrator. She’s my friend and has retired but could have gone higher had there been opportunity. Several other black ladies who dedicated themselves to the records department with literally decades of service could never get beyond being a supervisor. When I heard one of the female black supervisors with a master’s degree left to be a manager at another police department, it was disheartening. Why was she not good enough for LBPD?

This article made me think about what it actually takes to promote as a black woman in LBPD as a police officer or non-officer position. Education, skill, or loyalty to the department do not appear to be pre-requisites.

District 6 Resident (online)

White Supremacy

It is interesting that Al Jacobs [3/26/21 column] would pick the poems of Tracy Smith an African American woman and Carol Muske-Dukes a white woman both US Poet Laureates. Al uses their works as his example of sophomoric poetry. Maybe Al just misses the point of these poems.

The Smith poem is about slavery. Slavery as Al may have forgotten is about the institution of murder, of kidnapping, of torture, of the use of humans for the purpose of building an empire called the American empire. The Muske-Dukes poem is about the death penalty. We know how the death penalty is applied to people of color in the US.

Does Al not like these poems because of the subject matter or because of the gender and race of the poets? The only poetry that Al considers as valid is by old white men. I am beginning to see a pattern here.

Al would bring us back to antebellum or the Jim Crow eras. Al would throw us back 100s of years if he could because his sensibilities are challenged by the reality of the new century. It happened when George Floyd was murdered. The majority woke up.

The history of this country is the history of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Is also the history of immigrants some of which colonized and enslaved and some who were exploited to build a prosperous nation for the rich.

Al Jacobs literally wants us to return to that time when the darkies knew their place and the only good Injun was a dead Injun. The borders were closed to the rabble of eastern and southern Europe. And of course, closed to the Mexicans except when agriculture needed them. That’s what we call Straight Talk.

Marshall Blesofsky

Enough!

Stop telling me that I have to feel sorry for the vagrants and thieves that infest East Long Beach. Why my change of heart?

My epiphany occurred recently while I was being chased around my car by a bizarre, dangerous, aggressive and shrieking lunatic in the Los Altos Shopping Center parking lot. If that wasn’t enough, on the other side of the parking lot was another lunatic intimidating patrons by screaming to everyone and no-one!

Hey, Mayor Garcia. Hey, Stacy Mungo. Hey, LB City Council, how much more tax money will you conspire to strip from me and others as we watch our city being invaded by dangerous hobos taking over sections of our city and claiming that they have a right to do so. They pitch their pup tents and set up a thieves-headquarters to organize the theft of bicycles and the break in of cars.

These transients made choices in their lives that resulted in their pup-tent existence on a street corner or a thief’s village populated by similar malcontents & criminals.

I made different choices in my life that resulted in no pup-tents or stolen bicycles for me, yet I am considered prey for those who stalk, intimidate and steal from the innocent.

Don’t tell me that there aren’t enough LBPD officers to give the eastside the proper police patrol they deserve. Where are the statistics to document the eastside crimes?

The city takes my tax money for “feel-good” programs while I am being chased around the Los Altos parking lot and other patrons are being intimidated and denounced by another lunatic.

Hey Long Beach, get your priorities straight and fund the Police Department so that all the various divisions are adequately staffed, and all areas of the city are properly patrolled. I can’t remember the last time I saw a patrol car drive down my street.

Craig Miller

Crime Does Pay

A young Hispanic guy fired two shots at my husband on March 23 around 6:10 p.m. for no reason, while he was driving home from work near the Florence exit. Luckily the shots went over the roof of his car. The guy was driving with a passenger and they were both laughing at my husband in the next lane.

The state of Los Angeles and Long Beach has become unbearable. The trash heaps are everywhere as are the homeless camps with no sanitation. My husband is a 3rd generation Long Beach citizen. We have never seen the conditions this bad. People are crawling around our homes and property at night like zombies. Downtown LA is now a third world apocalypse.

Defunding the police and decriminalized criminal behavior is now a joke, in fact a laughing matter, while they pull a 45 pistol and fire bullets at innocent drivers just trying to get through another day.

Our government no longer works for hardworking honest people. Apparently, crime and land development does pay.

Denying our problems with population density, Insufficient police levels and no punishment for criminal behavior will only accelerate the decline of our quality of life.

Kerrie Aley

Con-gress Artists

Some states are asking for all voters to have a valid ID to vote and/or to get a ballot. This is called racist by the left. Would somebody please explain to these morons that in California we give IDs to illegal aliens so how is it racist to ask voters to use the darn things?

This is the most pathetic excuse to run ballot stuffing into our national and state voting process I’ve ever heard of. If anybody doubts Democrats in Congress are all liars and con artists, this should settle the dispute right now.

Vance Frederick