Sanchez not entitled to her own facts
I’d give Mary Sanchez a C+ on her “Study illuminates the way police die in the line of duty,” Balanced Views, Aug. 9. Her initial premise of police needing to be more careful on the job rings true, but she fails to support her secondary premise that Black Lives Matter has been falsely accused of stoking violence against police.
Often long on conclusions and short on facts, Sanchez provides some useful facts about how police die in the line of duty. No, most police deaths aren’t from gunshots, but shootings top the list and account for nearly half the line-of-duty deaths for the first half of 2016, and are happening at an increased rate. Her use of data from 2010-14 does nothing to explain the recent spate of intentional killings of police by black gunman nor exonerate BLM.
If police or their backers had marched citing black people as “pigs” needing to be “fried” or perpetuating false claims such as “hands up, don’t shoot,” how long would it take Sanchez to decry the marchers for inciting violence?
Sanchez is entitled to her opinion, but a factually supported one would be more effective.
GREGORY MARSHALL, MARIETTA
Airline hubs hurt competition
Similar to banks, airlines can become “too big to fail” in terms of safety standards, quality of service, and fairness. Delta exhibited this last week. It is too bad the Justice Department has allowed mergers to create airlines with fortress hubs (like Atlanta) that give the public little or no choice among competitors. This makes the public very vulnerable to the consequences of an airline’s failure to fulfill its obligations as a monopolistic provider of a critical service.
RON KURTZ, ATLANTA
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