A pattern of Chicago Police failings

Caught in a questionable handling of the Chicago Police Department investigation into the 2004 death of David Koschman, Lt. Denis P. Walsh resigned.

Now we learn the same Lt. Walsh declined to test Officer Dina Markham’s hands for gunshot residue in connection with the 2015 death of her husband, Sgt. Donald Markham (“FBI files reveal cheating allegations in mysterious Chicago cop deaths” — March 22).

Thus Walsh’s questionable judgment crops up again.

The U.S. Justice Department’s 2017 critique of the Chicago Police Department remains on hold, while City Hall drags its feet over how to enforce it, although it admits reform is badly needed. To save the department from itself, and to restore civilian trust in it, it’s time to purge it of the sort of questionable execution of duty for which Walsh appears to be the poster boy.

Without disciplinary consequences, expect more of the same.

Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park

The Founding Fathers would have wanted you to vote

Even as Illinois is about to go over the cliff of bankruptcy, roughly 70 percent of registered voters didn’t bother to vote in the primary to select honest politicians.

Our Founding Fathers warned us of this. While John Adams said that a republic could be “great and excellent,” he also warned a republic’s “principles are easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted.” And Illinois is the perfect example of corrupted human nature!

Thomas Jefferson also warned us when he said Americans “have to anticipate a time, and not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origins, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by the heads of government through the body of the people.”

Illinois is the perfect example of a corrupt state, with more former governors sent to prison than any other state. Yet 70 percent of eligible voters didn’t bother to vote and kick out the bums. Sadly, too many Americans are afraid to participate in the passionate debate that is required for democracy to work.

We should hold each other to Pericles’ standard: “Any citizen that does not pay attention to politics should not be allowed to live in Athens.”

Randy Rossi, Grayslake

Name calling is more suited for the playground than the White House

Trump is now boasting he can take “crazy” Joe Biden in a fight. And he has a wealth of nicknames for others who annoy him, with monikers like Rocket Man, Pocahontas and Dicky, to mention but a few.

This name-caller is the president of the United States, the highest official in the country, and a world leader. He is not a ten-year-old bully on the playground If he knew me, he’d probably nickname me “Chicken Little” because I, indeed, am waiting for the sky to fall. As this dude goes around making up names for the likes of Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, he might just cause a war.

Mel Novit, Morton Grove