Mixed farewell to Bill Bratton

Manhattan: I hope Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is retiring from the NYPD so that he can run against Bill de Blasio for mayor next year. De Blasio has been the worst mayor in recent history (“I’m not going to be here in the second term,” July 26). Bratton will restore law and order to the City of New York. Mohammad Muhanna Albany: Bill Bratton is the Donald Trump of policing. He has been a relentless self-promoter since Rudy Giuliani tapped him for the NYPD in 1994. He soon was on the cover of Time claiming credit for an historic “turnaround” of crime on the basis of CompStat, which begat stop-and-frisk and broken windows policing, both of which have made life miserable for communities of color. Terry O’Neill

First for First Ladies

Great Neck, L.I.: On July 28, Hillary Clinton will accept the nomination from the Democratic Party to run for President of the United States of America; it is also the anniversary of the birth of the incomparable Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. I find this very touching and historically connective. Mrs. Onassis, I believe, would have been very, very proud. Nadine Feingold

She knows nothing

Franklin Square, L.I.: Hillary knows nothing about Benghazi, Hillary knows nothing about her email server, Hillary now knows nothing about stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders. I wonder how many times Bill met with Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the tarmac. What does she know? Hillary has a serious credibility problem.

Richard Stallone

Pattern developing

North Arlington, N.J.: When asked about the emails that showed the Democratic National Committee worked to sabotage the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton said she knew nothing about them. When President Obama was asked about the IRS emails targeting Republicans, he said it was just a couple of knuckleheads in the Cincinnati office. Armand Rose

She’s not the one

Forest Hills: Of all the Democrats in this whole country, there is only one who could not have beaten Donald Trump — and they just nominated her.

Alan Hirschberg

Balanced coverage, please

New Hyde Park, L.I.: While I realize there are two candidates running for President this year, I also realize that your paper has seen fit to ridicule and insult Donald Trump every day since he announced he was running. Every day without fail for months now. Yet I have never seen a negative comment about or criticism of Hillary Clinton’s errors along her career path, or the many issues she’s been questioned about recently — not one negative comment. Let the voting public decide who they will vote for without adding fuel to the fire.

Ellen LaRegina

Looking down

Flushing: As I got to the end of Leonard Greene’s July 25 column blasting Donald Trump for prejudice and bigotry, “Don’t just beat bigot, crush him,” I saw Greene’s true prejudice come out. He mentions “rednecks” and “bumpkins,” so I understood I was reading the words of one more elitist snob who has contempt for anyone who isn’t from a big city on the East Coast. As a born New Yorker from Queens, I have always hated this form of New York snobbery and found it embarrassing. Valeria Kondratiev

Trust issues

Sebastian, Fla.: I learned a long time ago that when someone tells you to trust him, that’s the one thing you don’t do. You run like hell to get away from him.

Harold Lichtman

Dems for Trump

Brooklyn: This registered Democrat will be voting for Trump. Trump is the man to heal the U.S., despite the media’s attempts to portray him as divisive. Clinton is part of a criminal organization so dangerous she must be kept out of the White House. Steve Philipp

Behind Trump

Astoria: I watched Donald Trump’s speech with fascination. His lips were clearly moving but he seemed to be talking out of his ... Rudy Penza

Redo on recycling

Elmhurst: Re “It’s vicious recycle” (July 15) states that New Yorkers are “doing a terrible job” at recycling plastic cutlery. This is due to inadequate outreach by the Department of Sanitation regarding its new guidelines made public in April that — forks, knives, spoons and clam-shaped sturdy plastic containers, used in the deli stores for takeout — can now be recycled. New decals showing images of plastic cutlery and clam-shaped sturdy seethrough plastic containers must be disseminated among homeowners and building managers, and putting them on the recycling containers and bins must be made mandatory. Cecilia Gullas

PBA is off target

Bronx: Caricature is not a sound method of debate. In a recent letter responding to objections I raised against his petition to equip patrol officers with long guns, (“A 9-mm. is good enough,” July 21), the best that Voicer and PBA President Patrick Lynch offers is caricature. Unlike conditions that prevail in the South and the West, NYPD officers rarely work alone and when they call for assistance. Armed support responds inside of a minute. Multiple NYPD officers armed with 9-mm. handguns responding inside a minute are more than a match for any adversary, whether armed with a long gun or not. Since the point is unanswerable, Lynch manufactures his own. Specialized units, he says, would take longer than five minutes to respond to an active shooter. This is as true as it is irrelevant. I made no claims about specialized units. The issue of long guns is a derivative one. NYPD officers suffer a network of abiding problems. Their training is garbage — and politically driven; they are treated like garbage by predatory executive managers vainly pursuing stars; the policies imposed on them are addled; the quotas foisted on them are corrosive; CompStat and the tyranny of numbers emerging from it drive them mad, and all of this has their morale in the toilet. In the teeth of all this, enter the long-entrenched president of the PBA to talk about long guns — no doubt an issue at the top of every cop’s list of the sicknesses that ail them.

Daniel Modell

The long, long toll

Schenectady: Voicer John Hughes says it would take two front pages for the Daily News to print the names of all police killed by black men. You know what won’t fit on the front page? The 20-million-plus African Americans killed by the white man starting on the slave ships, shot, lynched, burned to death on the KKK crosses, bombed in churches, tortured and then beaten to death. Or the blacks who had fire hoses sprayed at them or were attacked by police dogs, or the black men used in syphilis testing or murdered, unarmed, by police etc., etc., etc. Diane Hombach

Straight facts about Sodom

Manhattan: Voicer Vincent Manente has some common misinterpretations of Jewish Scripture in writing that “G-d destroyed two homosexual cities, Sodom and Gomorrah.” What happened in Sodom was not homosexuality but sexual abuse. A distinction must be made between homosexuality (consensual same-gender sex) and sexual abuse. Similar to some abusive Corey Sipkin/New York Daily News practices of fraternities in their treatment of new candidates for membership, the men of Sodom subjected unfamiliar passing travelers to hazing. The Jewish law that Sodom broke was not about homosexuality, but not welcoming the stranger.

Sarah-David Rosenbaum

Thanks, Jimmy

Sunnyside: As a long-time resident of Phipps Gardens Apartments I find your July 22 “Up, Sunnyside” editorial attack on Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer extremely off the mark. He listened to the protests of the community and the petitions of over 2,000 residents of Sunnyside and Woodside. The infrastructure in this area can’t handle the number of people we have living here now. This includes schools, both middle and elementary; train and bus service, parking and overcrowding in general. Only 20% to 30% of the units will be for low-income people. The rest will be for those in the middle-income brackets. I believe Phipps is in it for the money as they have been at their Sunnyside, Woodside, Astoria and Long Island City communities. It is a far cry from the old days when they truly cared about their tenants. They are not the benevolent landlord of the working class that they once were. Van Bramer is on the right side of this issue. MaryAnn Joyce

No more News

Brooklyn: Your paper has really turned into a rag. No more wasting $1 for this trash. Regina Sirico