Readers write

MARTA promised safety, but hasn’t delivered

MARTA promised a police officer on every train. That promise has gone largely unkept, and the consequences are now fatal.

I ride MARTA regularly and have seen a police presence on a train exactly once. Officers who are present tend to cluster on platforms, chatting rather than patrolling. Meanwhile, riders witness infractions on virtually every trip: people sleeping across seats, panhandling, eating and drinking, blasting phones or yelling, and vendors openly selling liquor, cigarettes, and stolen goods. All of it, ignored.

The recent killing of a passenger did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in an environment where MARTA’s own leadership signaled, through inaction, that the rules do not apply. The blood of that victim is on the hands of every official who let this commitment quietly die.

Safety is not complicated. It starts with presence and zero tolerance, enforced visibly and consistently. When riders see officers actually patrolling and intervening, the culture shifts. Criminal behavior thrives in the absence of accountability.

MARTA riders deserve to feel safe. They were promised they would be. It is time for MARTA’s leadership to either honor that commitment in full or publicly explain why they have not. The next crime against a victim is preventable. The choice is theirs.

NICK VILLAUME, DECATUR

America’s legacy of greatness is being squandered

As we approach the anniversary of D-Day (June 6), do the French today think differently about Americans than they thought about our parents?

What if you could ask any member of the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles,” or 82nd Airborne who jumped into Sainte-Mere-Eglise on D-Day? Or anyone on the first wave at Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, or the Rangers of Pointe du Hoc? Or members of the French Resistance? What about the white crosses at Omaha Beach? How about descendants of the Holocaust rescued from the extermination camps by Americans?

It was the Americans and other allies together who took on evil and who “saved the world,” as President Clinton said on the 50th anniversary of D-Day. I was there and witnessed the French gratitude.

Is our legacy of American greatness and worldwide reputation squandered by withdrawal from alliances? Did the French help us against Britain at the Battle of Yorktown so there would be an America? Would George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR or Harry Truman withdraw from alliances? That’s not how we lasted 250 years.