Police officers heading out on patrol deserve our respect, gratitude

Someone has to “walk the point.” There is always one person, way out in front of everyone else, whose duty is to look and listen and sense that first contact when young men and women put on their police uniforms and head out on patrol.

Those young men and women deserve our respect and gratitude. Police officers across the country share a commitment to something larger than themselves.

Our entire way of life in America depends on the rule of law. Maintaining the law is a hard and daily labor. In this country, we don’t have soldiers in the streets or militias setting the rules. Instead, we have public servants — like Officer Samuel Jimenez, a hero killed in the Mercy Hospital shooting — to patrol our communities.

They impact many of us as they go about their duty to “protect and serve,” a duty that is a gift to each of us. We depend on them and value their willingness to put themselves in danger on our behalf. We know what they stand for, day in and day out.

We should all be strengthened by their courage and heartened by their valor. Keep them in mind as your rest soundly in the safety of your home tonight.

What inspires these men and women? We know the answer: It is their faith and belief in serving the public and their loyalty to a higher calling.

Joe Miller, chief of police, Palos Park

Impose sanctions

As you know, since 2017, hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang province of China have been unjustly arrested and imprisoned in what the Chinese government calls “political re-education camps.” Thousands have reportedly disappeared.

Many are tortured and killed for the sole reason of being an Uighur. The lucky ones are forced to learn Communist ideology under the threat of the barrel of a gun.

Religious and cultural freedoms of the largest minority in China are being suppressed, and systematic ethnic cleansing is perpetrated by the government of Xi Jinping. Ambassador Kelley Currie at the United Nations has already called on the Chinese government to end its repressive policies in Xinjiang. But it’s not enough. Washington must impose sanctions on senior Chinese officials for human rights abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act.

Rana Yurtsever, Streamwood