Enforce social distancing
Safety vs. inconvenience
Regarding “Reason to snitch,” (A14, May 28): Bravo, bravo, bravo! Really a shame that city officials including the fire department (and state officials as well) can’t figure out a way to enforce violators of pandemic rules and regulations. If you don’t tend to enforce them, why issue them? I realize you can’t issue and enforce mandates of common sense, but hey, folks, we are dealing with a deadly virus that has already killed over a 100,000 people here. The governor, the attorney general, the mayor and the fire department all have some share of the blame.
No one has the right to cause another person to become infected with this deadly virus just because they might be slightly inconvenienced. Bob Pope, The Woodlands
About your editorial on enforcing compliance with health regulations for the coronavirus: It would be helpful if there were somewhere that we could find which restaurants and businesses are trying to be safe. Lack of customers is a powerful enforcement. We know of restaurants from talking to friends that we will never go to again (no masks on servers, too crowded, etc). We also have recommendations of ones who care about their clients and staff. Jean Kennedy Hunter, Houston
Transparency
Regarding “Minn. under state of emergency as protests of man’s death turn violent,” (A1, May 29): The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has received a lot of national attention, and properly so. But the six police killings in Houston in the last month have received very little attention locally or nationally. A videotape showed Nicholas Chavez on his knees without a gun when he was killed by Houston Police Department officers. How can that be justified? Why weren’t the officers involved in Chavez’s killing fired like the officers in Minneapolis? And why can’t the police in the U.S. do a better job in preventing these killings like we see the police doing in other countries? What is wrong with Houston? What is wrong with America? David Atwood, Houston
Stimulus debit card
Regarding “IRS: Don’t throw away that debit card in the mail,” (A4, May 28): I received mine yesterday. Thought it was a scam since I had not ordered it. Was curious so I called the bank customer service number to inquire about the card. No human answered but I was asked for my Social Security number; surely this is phishing. But before tossing it, I called my local bank to see what they knew. They explained that it was the stimulus money. Why is there no letter from the IRS telling me to expect the stimulus money in the form of a debit card? Why does the bank not have a human answering the phone to explain the purpose of the debit card? I’ll bet many will toss the card without investigating. Gunter Frankel, Houston