Zero tolerance alone won't add up to a better city

Zero tolerance alone won't add up to a better city
EDITOR:
The lesson being learned from the mayor's new "zero-tolerance policy" in retaliation of four senseless murders simultaneously is simple, "Drive Safe." Put your seatbelts on, use your blinkers, stop at every stop sign for at least five seconds. To be extra safe, stop at yellow lights as if they were red.
We know that it is winter and the city streets are full of snow, ice and our infamous potholes tearing up rims and flattening our tires; I beg of you, just hit them. I implore you not to try to dodge them or to even slide on the icy slushy roads into the next lane. Last but not least, get those license plate lights fixed. They are no more than 3 at your local auto parts store.
A recent edition of The Vindicator reported that 161 citations of these aforementioned discretionary violations were handed out on Market Street alone. Forget that our jails are already overcrowded, our schools are among the worst in the state, our dying economy and the multitude of other problems our city is facing. Just throw out that Youngstown has had one of the highest murder rates in the nation consistently over the years without too much ever really being done about it.
So Mr. Mayor, for your willingness to step out of your office and step up to the plate, I applaud you. I can't help but be critical of the new "zero-tolerance policy" though. It seems to me that a certain stench of profiling is being used to pull over a certain race of people. It seems to me that while there are criminals being found with these stops, that the majority of the stops end up with a senseless citation to an otherwise law-abiding citizen that at the most should be a warning. I fear that as one criminal gets locked up, another is being released due to the overcrowded situation, basically trading a criminal for a criminal.
I have spent all of my 29 years of life in Youngstown. Attended and graduated from city schools. I have seen the ups and the downs of life as a young black male in Youngstown. I don't claim to be the smartest person alive, nor the dumbest and I have the greatest respect for the mayor and the YPD. It just seems to me that there is a better way to fight crime in this city. You could put me on any main street on any side of town and I could pick out the drug dealers. I'm pretty sure there are laws against profiling like that, but seriously, to fight crime, you have to fix the infrastructure. Get our children educated, keep and attract jobs in the city, make downtown a central entertainment and shopping district. Amend our drug and weapons laws to "zero-tolerance," mandatory sentences for possessions that run consecutive. Insist that nightclub owners hire uniformed police officers. Mandate certain corner stores to close at reasonable hours to cut down on loitering at certain times of the night. Get rid of all the dilapidated buildings and houses that are nothing but eyesores to our community. Increase community programming for the youth as well as adults. Create a platform to teach men how to become men, how to be fathers to their children, husbands to their wives.
Give a man something to be proud of and he will be proud.
DERRICK BENSON
Youngstown
Mothers, protect your own
EDITOR:
After once again reading about a "live-in boyfriend" beating his girlfriend's children almost to death, I had to write. Not to ask the usual question as to why this is happening, but to request that each single mother with small children, who is allowing her boyfriend to move in with her, be given a warning that her children are in danger of losing their lives.
What kind of sons are we raising, Mom and Dad? What kind of bullies are we nourishing each day that beat little children and babies? Where are the extended families of these people who perhaps see abuse and do nothing until it's too late? Where are the neighbors who see and hear things and "don't want to get involved?" And last but not least, why do the mothers of these children tolerate the abuse of her own flesh and blood?
MARGARET HENNING
Boardman