I was a cop for 33 years. Why didn’t Kenosha police question an armed vigilante in a riot-torn city?

The editorial “It’s a Meme. Make-believe soldiers strap on their big guns to show who’s boss,” asked questions that need serious answers.

Armed individuals wander the streets of Kenosha with weapons of war, and the local cops casually pass them by as if it’s perfectly alright? Wisconsin is a concealed carry state, but is that enough to not warrant even the slightest scrutiny — “Hey, what are you doing here?” Criticizing cops is not something I make a habit of doing, but having been one for 33 years it’s almost inconceivable to me that armed vigilantes wandering a riot-torn city did not get the slightest bit of scrutiny until people were dead.

It’s almost as though the teenager arrested in the killings, Kyle Rittenhouse, was emboldened by the lack of law enforcement to even question his motives. Any person walking about with a loaded AR-15 NEEDS to be stopped and detained. Somewhere in that chain of command, there was a failure.

La Voz Sidebar

Lea este artículo en español en La Voz Chicago, la sección bilingüe del Sun-Times.

Two people are dead. The world is watching. Yes indeed, some answers to lots of questions need to be forthcoming.

Bob Angone, retired CPD lieutenant, Austin Texas

Hunt doves with cameras, not guns

In response to “Opening day: Dove hunting at Illinois’ public sites will be different with pandemic, but there’s hope,” I think the hope for many of us is that hunters stay home.

Many species of doves mate for life. Parents work together to raise their young, and when one partner dies, the other appears to mourn. A woman in the San Francisco area found a deceased mourning dove on her deck, and for eight straight days, another dove, whom she surmised to be the fallen bird’s partner, came and sat on the deck for hours. Doves love to eat the seeds of weeds, helping out everyone with a garden or lawn, as well as farmers. And their beautiful colors and pretty songs make them a welcome sight for bird watchers or people out for an evening stroll.

PETA encourages everyone to let these sentient animals live and to “hunt” for them with binoculars and cameras instead.

Michelle Kretzer, The PETA Foundation

Dickens must be read to be appreciated

According to Leo Tolstoy’ s daughter Alexandra, he considered Charles Dickens to be literature’s greatest writer and “David Copperfield” its greatest novel.

And after I read Richard Roeper’s review of the latest attempt to cinematize David Copperfield, I am more convinced than ever that outstanding literature must be read to be fully appreciated. This is especially true of a writer such as Dickens, who meticulously and painstakingly crafted his characters and plots. To date, none of the myriad attempts to transfer Dickens to the silver screen have been successful, not even the million versions of “A Christmas Carol.”

The reason for this is simple: his writings are too large and intricate for the movie format. To be sure, a few movies have partially captured the atmosphere of the author’s landscape, but they fall far short of displaying his true genius.

If you want the real Dickens and not some clever screenplay that often plays like ‘“Alice in Wonderland as interpreted by Monty Python,” read this superlative book and run the gamut of human emotions.

Samuel C. Small, Roseland