The city needs more law & order

Email to or post your letter to or send fax to Please include full name, address and daytime phone number. The Daily News reserves the right to edit letters.

Manhattan: I was a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime Section of the U.S. Department of Justice during the 1980s. Last year, violent felonies increased in NYC. This year, the trends continue. Shootings and murders are up 25%. Rather than undertake responsible measures, our feckless leaders have allowed politically-correct rhetoric to overwhelm reality. We have eliminated cash bail for certain assaults that are motivated by bigotry, for home burglaries, and for robberies in which victims are threatened with force. We have abandoned the successful model of broken windows policing, and discouraged the responsible, nondiscriminatory use of stop and frisk. We have legalized or eliminated the prosecution of quality-of-life offenses, and raised the age at which we prosecute teenagers as adults. Now our mayor and members of the City Council think that up to a billion dollars can be diverted from the NYPD without a commensurate impact on public safety.

Yes, we need to recruit more carefully, and train officers to respect the rights of all, but if we defund the police, a pandemic of crime will rampage through our city, encouraging flight among many taxpayers, and obliterating small businesses and real estate value, as it did in the ’70s and ‘80s. The government should provide opportunities to allow carefullyscreened offenders alternatives to incarceration. But make no mistake: For one pandemic, the answer may be to lock down. For a pandemic of crime, the remedy is, when appropriate, to lock up. Matthew J. Brief

Shea what?!

Manhattan: So NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea says cops ramming their vehicle into protesters was not an inappropriate use of force? Why is he trying to bring down the entire NYPD rather than just punish the “bad apples”? Hey Shea, look what happened to your predecessor Bernie Kerik, who was commissioner. (Hint: He got four years in prison!) You make all cops look like crooked thugs. Your cops should cuff you for risking their lives and reputations.

Janice Amato

Self-police

Richmond Hill: One way to improve our police departments: Pay bonuses to good cops who turn in bad cops.

Robert Clolery

Get with the times

Manhattan: In Patrick Lynch’s “Police unions protect us all” (op-ed, June 21), he describes George Floyd’s murder as an isolated crime, and attempts to shift the focus to the contractual rights of his rank-and-file officers. This argument is anachronistic. The era when police misconduct

could be hidden from public view is over. It would have been more helpful if Lynch had acknowledged an institutional problem and had committed to being part of the solution.

Bob Salzman

Lock, stock

Manhattan: Last weekend in NYC, there were 20 shootings in 24 hours. I would be curious how many of those guns were purchased in the long lines that popped up when COVID-19 first started. They couldn’t use them to protect themselves from a virus. Why was a weapon suddenly so important? Sherrel Cox

Lethal grandmas

Bay Shore, L.I.: Wow, who knew taking away the police would cause gun sales to skyrocket? Democrats have been trying to chip away at our gun rights for years. Now they just accomplished the total opposite. The moms and grandmas of this country are arming themselves to the hilt. Hooray for them.

Christine Sallah

Flarin’ up

Brooklyn: We have gunfire sensors all over the city. Can’t they detect fireworks as well? The police go after gun dealers, as well as illegal gun owners. This is no different. Fireworks are just as dangerous as guns. Greg Ahl

Boom!

Whitestone: Stop complaining about fireworks. This is New York. This is what we do. I was awakened at 3 a.m. I smiled. I was grateful.

Jaime Cruz

Bad call

Staten Island: To Voicer Anne Malone: I absolutely do not suggest you do this, but Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams recommends that, to ease the firework disturbance, you don’t call 311 or 911 but instead actually put yourself in harm’s way and confront the amateur pyromaniacs yourself. Perhaps you should call his office at 3 a.m. and ask him what to do after his ridiculous advice doesn’t work. After all, you won’t be able to sleep anyway.

Dave Trossello

It’s official

Breezy Point: I want to give Mayor de Blasio credit for coming up with an ingenious plan to clamp down on the illegal fireworks. He just announced an undercover sting operation before it happens, and after the crime has been committed. This is the kind of thinking that makes the Dope from Park Slope the undisputed worst mayor ever.

Bill Lacey

In de-fense

Manhattan: Say what you will about de Blasio, but he gets up every morning, suits up, and, we can assume, does his best. Who wants to take constant heat on every little thing in the world’s most demanding city? James A. Fragale

Buyer’s remorse?

Old Bridge, N.J.: Has it dawned on Tampa Bay yet that they might have been hasty in hiring an egomaniacal prima donna like Tom Brady? Hope it turns out to be worth it, but I doubt it.

Janet Cecin

Offside

Verona, N.J.: Comparing Colin Kaepernick to Pat Tillman is an affront to every person serving in the military.

Nancy J. Wands

Tusk fund

Metuchen, N.J.: Hey John Bolton, now that you want to sell a book, suddenly everything is wrong with Donald Trump. You are just like him. Both of you should retire to the seashore with the rest of the walruses. I will read your book when I can borrow it at my local library. Not a dime of my money is going in your deep pockets.

Carol Hoousendove

WES PARNELL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Crime pays

Forest Hills: Can we apply the Son of Sam laws against John Bolton’s book, because of his traitorous behavior in refusing to testify at the impeachment hearings?

It’s in the mail

Brooklyn: Two business days before the primary election, I received a mailin ballot. I completed it, but made a mistake, and so found myself at the Brooklyn Board of Elections trying to obtain a replacement ballot on the day the ballot had to be postmarked. Mailing out ballots so that voters receive them so soon before the deadline is essentially an attempt at voter suppression. I realize that a lot is out of the Board’s control, with COVID-19, civil unrest, etc. Nevertheless, voter suppression is voter suppression.

Cheryl L. Branche

Very absent

Stew Frimer

Staten Island: Three weeks ago, I completed a form to receive a mail-in ballot. As of this writing, I still have not received it. I am handicapped and cannot walk far. At my polling place, I have to walk about 900 feet, and up a grade, in pain. All I can say is, “Thanks for nothing.”

Thomas Bell