Editor, Times-Union: I just read the letter from Kevin Paxton and would like to say, "Amen!"
I have seen the lack of interest first hand of the police in this area. My particular incident (or incidents) took place in North Manchester several years back. While parked in the lot adjacent to the VFW, my car was smashed into and the person just left. This is a hit and run, obviously. Something I thought very serious at the time. But apparently I was wrong. When I reported it to the police, they merely wrote down what I told them I had found at the scene. When I asked the officer if he was going to even go look at my vehicle, he said, "I see no need in it." Well, there was a ton of light blue paint from the offending vehicle all over my quarter panel. And I explained this to the officer. But he just said that it would do no good and dismissed me. Great police work, eh?
I suppose if he had looked at the paint, someday he may have run across the offending light blue vehicle with my maroon paint all over it and arrested the guy or done something about it.
My mother was involved in another instance where a man backed into her parked car right in front of Miller Tire in North Manchester. He did significant damage to her bumper and just drove off like it never happened. This time my mother and a witness saw the offending vehicle and went to the police to report it. The officer told them that since she saw the vehicle and it had a company name on it that she should go speak to the man, because he was busy setting up basketball hoops for FunFest. This was not only totally incompetent of the officer, but had my mother decided to go directly to this person, it could have put her in danger.
This kind of behavior is totally unacceptable. We need to look seriously at who we are trusting with our safety. What is more important, people? FunFest or our citizens safety?
Not all of our fine men in uniform are lax in their duties. We have some fine officers in the area. But the guys just there to get a paycheck have to go.
