Letters to the Editor

Sen. Schoesler omitted info on police pursuits

In a recent op-ed, state Sen. Mark Schoesler, alluded to a new “bad law” that prevents law enforcement from pursuing criminal suspects in most situations.

He cherry-picks a paragraph from an op-ed in a Seattle newspaper written by one of his senate colleagues, Marka Dhingra, who happens to be the first Sikh elected to a public office anywhere in the U.S.. (The Sikhs are a persecuted religious sect in India.) Also, she has been a deputy prosecuting attorney for King County for 20 years.

I looked up her guest editorial and it seems, Schoesler left out plenty of valuable information. In the last seven years, 30 Washington residents have been killed in high-speed chases, nearly half of them passengers or innocent bystanders.

More recently, in March of 2020, in Chehalis, a dismounted WSP trooper was purposely hit and killed by a fleeing driver doing 100 mph. Spike strips eventually stopped him.

His crime? Shoplifting.

Then, two weekends ago, a motorcyclist in Spokane Valley, tried to outrun police and was hit and killed in an intersection. His crime? A traffic violation.

Nationally, between 1980 and 2015, 11,500 people were killed in police pursuits, with 5,000 as passengers or bystanders.

Schoesler, partisan, as usual, made certain to blame this so-called “bad law” on the Democrats. But when lives are at stake, would it hurt, just once, to be a team player?

Bruce Pemberton

– Palouse

Guns do kill people

Who has more mental problems – perpetrators of gun violence or congressional Republicans, including our own Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who lack normal compassion and regard for human life, even of young children?

Congressional Republicans have once again copped out of their responsibility to do anything significant to stop mass killings by effectively acting only on mental illness measures. At the least, their social-emotional development has been severely stunted.

Using the Second Amendment of the Constitution as their crutch, they ignore its original intention to make certain that southern colonies would join the union by assuring white militias for squelching slave mutiny. By their “well-regulated militia”, the founders undoubtedly didn’t envision the country-wide, out-of-control proliferation of expert killing machines that indiscriminately eliminate its own people.

Whatever the mental health of the perpetrator, using an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine hugely increases the number of people killed; so the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 to 2004 should be revived, at a minimum. Opposing that indicates a mentally unhealthy lack of compassion and regard for the sanctity of human life.

Yes, guns do kill people. Our extreme availability of guns make it the easiest method of killing people, guaranteeing the greatest finality. Contrast this with murder and mass killing rates in countries with stricter gun control laws. For example, recently the Japanese people were shocked that someone (former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe) could be killed by a gun; not surprisingly, it was self-made rather than purchased.

Norm Luther

–Spokane