Officer deserved to get job back
I respond to the Tuesday Dispatch article “Officer in stomping gets his job back.” I wrote Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther and Public Safety Director Ned Pettus on June 20, 2017, about their decision-making process regarding Officer Zach Rosen. I said then, “You and I both know that this whole situation is a fiasco that will result in Officer Rosen eventually being reinstated with back pay and possibly damages for emotional distress, loss of reputation and libel.”
Well, that message has come to fruition. Ginther ignored four street-level leadership findings and two command-level recommendations. Having his safety director follow his directive to fire a decorated police officer for political standing was pathetic.
Columbus is less safe without police, but dangerous without real leadership. Ginther is a vote-pandering opportunist.
Mike Dixon Johnstown scary things (bird and bat killers, big things, athletic things, etc.) associated with electricity-generating wind farms. The fact is that tall things (like skyscrapers) kill flying animals; and they drop ice, snow, stone and concrete on people, cars and other lower objects.
Do we say “Not in my backyard” to the construction of tall buildings in our densely populated cities? Generally, no we don’t.
There is no reason why ice falling from wind farms cannot be controlled by the proper practice of shutdown during icy conditions. It has been estimated that up to 500,000 birds are killed by wind turbines in the U.S. each year; cats and buildings kill, conservatively, hundreds of millions of birds each year.
Noted entomologist E.O. Wilson estimates that human activity has accelerated the rate of species extinction 100 to 1,000 times the baseline rate established by paleontologists. This fact, and the documented health effects of burning coal (particulates, mercury and greenhouse gases), I find far scarier.
Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a scary book, “The Sixth Extinction,” that puts human activity in perspective: We are changing the planet in ways we don’t even perceive yet. We might understand it after we lose the species we rely on for our continued survival.
I find that scary.
J. Mac Crawford Columbus