Letters: . . . But not totally

FIRST, I'd like to offer condolences to the families of every city police officer. It seems your commissioner has made it open season on every one of you.

He expects you to be tough on crime, but if you're a little too tough, you're fired.

Maybe if we allowed our officers a little flexibility to do their job, this city wouldn't be referred to as Killadelphia.

It makes me sick that you can walk down the street with a gun, and if I looked at you wrong, I'm dead. What happened to the rights of every hard-working (note "working") person in this city?

We are the prisoners here.

We work, pay taxes and yet the scum of our city get all the breaks. The way I look at it, if you break the law you get punished, which means if you're told to stop, you stop. If you run, whatever happens - oh, well.

As for the men and women in blue, you have my utmost respect. You go to work everyday to fight a battle the politicians and judges won't let you win. To the families of all police officers, when you get a knock at your front door and see uniforms and clergy, know that the one second it took for your loved one to decide on using a little force or standing down for fear of losing their job cost you everything.

Be safe, officers.

Mark Gittel, Philadelphia

Where is Al Sharpton when three officers were gunned down by black men? I guess the newspaper didn't reach his front door that day, or he forgot to watch the evening news.

Why doesn't he take a page out of Bill Cosby's book and talk the his community and find out what the problem is? Sharpton would rather sit there and point the finger at white people for their problems.

We made them drop out of school. We made them smoke pot instead of getting a job.

We made them have four kids with four different women. We made them shoot and rob innocent people.

Jim Hughes

Philadelphia