To the editor,
My son, Det. Frank P. Collins, enlisted in the army and served as a military policeman in Bosnia. He returned as a sergeant to his first love as a cop. This brings me to why I’m writing you. The Detectives Endowment Association will not put police officers who died off duty on its memorial website.
In 2009 I met with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. He upgraded the NYPD “In Service” memorial website. Thank you, Commissioner Kelly.
These men and women put their lives in jeopardy to protect us and yes even the Detectives Endowment Association.
Detectives Endowment Association, do the right thing. All that is needed is a name, and if you want to be generous, the year of service. The main criteria is the time limit going to and leaving work.
It has been 11 long years that I’m trying to challenge the Detectives Endowment Association to do the right thing and put all detectives who died off duty on a Detectives Endowment Association website. Most of all, show me and other loved ones that they are not forgotten.
Gloria Bauman Collins
Bay Ridge
Equine abuse
To the editor,
As a native New Yorker, a veterinarian, and a gay man, I am passionate about our city, and I love so much of what it has to offer. But I have come to despise the inhumane and corrupt horse carriage industry.
My initial exposure to the abuse of the carriage horses was from the critically acclaimed documentary “Blinders.” After much research, and going with an equine veterinarian to see some of the actual inadequate and hazardous stables these animals were being kept in, I decided to join the crusade to rid the city of this cruel and abusive tourist attraction.
What I came to find was that under Mayor Bloomberg and Council Speaker Quinn, and their associations with the carriage owners and drivers, the horses were going to stay in their horrid conditions and continue working the streets indefinitely. What I would later find out was that Quinn, in all of her time as speaker, had prevented every significant piece of animal welfare legislation from reaching the council floor.
We need to remove the dark clouds hovering over buildings housing imprisoned horses that are forced to mercilessly work in traffic, day in and day out, all in the name of entertainment.
John G. Hynes
Staten Island
The writer is a boardmember of the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association.
Thanks, Tom
To the editor,
Tom Allon, thank you so much for writing about the educational visions of mayoral candidate Bill DeBlasio (“DeBlasio will bring a new direction for education,” Mayoral Spin Cycle, Oct. 4).
DeBlasio is correct. We need to create more community partnerships in education. We need to build a team that will help support and empower our students.
As an educator for the last 12 years in Coney Island, I have seen how socioeconomic conditions have had an impact on our students.
Racial differences in achievement reflect conditions outside school far more than those inside school.
Schooling helps limit the expansion of gaps in racial achievement as children age, at least during the elementary years. Thank you again. Scott Krivitsky
The writer is a teacher at PS 188.
Dept. of ‘Ed’
To the editor,
Leave it to the Department of Education to come up with a new disciplinary code. We already have counseling for students. We need a system of zero tolerance for any disciplinary infractions. We don’t need the ultra-liberal nonsense of cooperative learning, alternate assessments, and focusing on the total child, when the city school system has become one of disrespect, defiance, and disruption.
Of course, these ideas have been thought up by people who either never taught or were expert at getting out of the classroom. Ask any teacher. You cannot teach without discipline, and that is why so many new teachers leave the system within five years of beginning their careers. Some of our schools are so bad that the National Guard needs to be called just to restore order. Ed Greenspan
Sheepshead Bay
Break with law
To the editor,
The National Education Association is spending a ton of money on advertisements urging Americans to call Republicans and tell them to stop playing games, to end the shutdown, and to get those money spigots opened up.
ObamaCare is the law of the land, and Congress should just shut up and vote the money to fund it (and lots more). Well, the fact is that we have lots of laws and they don’t all stay on the books forever. Some are kept while others are repealed or replaced or corrected. And some are defunded.
It used to be against the law to be gay or to drink alcohol or to marry someone of a different race, and so on. We finally started getting out of Vietnam when Congress began using its power of the purse to defund our involvement there.
Times change. Attitudes change. Ideas change. And the law has to change with them. To say that any one law must be kept unchanged and fully funded forever just because it is the law of the land is almost unlawful.
Dr. Stephen Finger
Mill Basin
Papal compassion
To the editor,
I am a non-Catholic who is for pro-choice. I am overjoyed that Pope Francis believes the church should not stand in the way of a woman who wishes to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
We are not living in an ideal world, but a hugely populated one, with decreasing food resources. What happens if the world population increases to 20 billion? Will people have to resort to cannibalism?
Pope Francis is both practical and compassionate, and deserves great praise.Elliott Abosh
Brighton Beach
Pro-Miley
To the editor,
I give Miley Cyrus mad credit, mad props, and mad respect for her sexy performance at the MTV Music Video Awards.
Madonna and Britney Spears had their time, now let Miley have hers.
If she chooses to share a sensual kiss with a man or a woman — or both — why should I have a problem with that?
So don’t go trying to shove that perpetual, conservative bull about being moral, and what’s respectful, and what’s appropriate down her throat because nine out of 10 times she’s not going to want to hear that. Just let the woman do her thing, and let her live her life. Period.
Sebastian Casalnova
Bensonhurst
Courier in memoriam
To the editor,
I’m a long-time reader of your newspapers, and I was happy to read that copies of the Courier have been placed in time capsules at the long-awaited YWCA in Coney Island (“Timely news! Our papers placed in Coney time capsule,’ Oct. 16).
Now you will give future generations as much to think about their community, as you have given past ones.
Keep up the good work, Courier staff.
Frannie Blum
Sheepshead Bay
Lazy pols
To the editor,
Both the president and Congress should have worked together over the past year. They should have put our fiscal house in order to end future threats of both sequestering and furloughs. They should have returned to the time when Congress held budget hearings for each department during the summer instead of taking a five-week vacation. They should have developed a budget, agency by agency, to be adopted during an open process.
Members of Congress, federal employees, the public, watchdog groups, and the media should have been afforded sufficient time to understand the full contents prior to adoption. Our 2014 full federal budget should have been adopted on time, prior to the start of the new federal fiscal year on Oct. 1.
Hard-working civil servants pay taxes just like everyone else. The White House and Congress should be held accountable for their actions, or in this case inactions, just as employees are at end-of-the-year personnel evaluations.
Both the president, members of Congress and their respective employees should be docked one full day’s pay for each day the 2014 budget is not adopted. They need to perform this most basic requirement of their jobs, which is passing a budget on time, just like federal civil servants do on a daily basis.
Larry Penner
Great Neck, N.Y
