Not acceptable Serve youth
Re “How could police have handled the Windsor traffic stop differently? Should they have?” (May 2): Retired police Lt. Charles J. “Joe” Key fouled my newspaper. The Windsor police acted appropriately against that U.S. Army lieutenant?
“I don’t want to sound preachy,” Key said, “but in watching this (video), I don’t see what else the cops could do.”
Do us a favor, lieutenant. Stay retired and shut up.
Here’s what those police should have done. First, recognize that Lt. Caron Nazario did not accelerate his vehicle when he was ordered to stop. Instead, Nazario slowed down in order to affirm he was cooperating, not fleeing, and was taking the vehicle to a well-lit and public area, according to a lawsuit.
If you are Black in America, stopping for police on dark, isolated roads with no witnesses present, is potentially ordering your own death sentence. That self-preservation tactic comes right out of “the talk” playbook Black and brown parents give their children.
Second, as Key sits in timeout, he could listen to Joseph Giacalone, also retired, of the New York Police Department: “The law doesn’t require that someone is immediately told why they are being pulled over, he said, but it’s typically good policing to do just that,” as reported by The Virginian-Pilot.
Policing in America is broken, especially if you’re Black. It is time to stop fooling ourselves into thinking that incidents like the Windsor stop, and other cases of excessive maiming and lethal force by rotten police officers — recorded on video — are acceptable.
Wayne Dawkins, Suffolk
The hard truth is that estimates show that 50% or more of youth in the juvenile justice system have also been in the child welfare system. Some policies have attempted to address this reality such as SB546. The law was passed in Virginia in 2020, and it raised the age at which youth could be tried as an adult from 14 to 16 years old.
Policies like this appear at face value to be improvements but continue to fail our youth. Rather, it represents how our legislators are doing the bare minimum compared to other forward-thinking countries that allow those up to age 21 to be tried as a juvenile. Policies like SB546 are not radical enough to promote justice or welfare for youth. What we need are policies that enact preventative measures for vulnerable youth to reduce the likelihood of them encountering either or both systems.
We need legislators to base decisions on data when creating policies that impact youth. Lastly, we need systems that are rehabilitative in nature rather than aimlessly punitive. At what point will we stop making children responsible for their circumstances and instead make the systems and policies failing them responsible? Legislators and these systems are uniquely poised to foster positive changes in these children and adolescents in need of security, justice and services.
Rachel Boles, Hartfield