Readers Write: Public safety in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota Sex Offender Program, Trump administration travel ban

Every Minneapolis voter should be required to read the Sept. 24 Star Tribune editorial "Zone of concern" and the related commentary by Carter Averbeck before going to the polls. They summarized the city's worrisome crime, particularly after dark. The articles offer several excellent suggestions. I, too, live downtown and recall more police on horseback at bar closing times and multiple officers on foot. What happened to that practice? One of the worst suggestions came in a letter to the editor from Phyllis Kahn, a former state representative who can't figure out why she was not re-elected. Here's why, Phyllis: You passed a bill lowering and eliminating lights on streets. Now you suggest lowering the drinking age to 18 and eliminating closing hours at bars. Reread the Jan. 12 commentary "Turning the lights back on in Detroit" about how that city figured out how to address its reputation for high crime by increasing the use of LED lighting. Criminals and undesirables avoid bright lights. Voters, please read the Sept. 24 editorial and the Averbeck commentary. You'll see the importance of casting your votes for candidates who want to earn our faith again by overseeing efforts to make downtown Minneapolis safe and vibrant again. Our tax dollars paid for many mistakes. Let's vote to change that.

BARBARA NYLEN, Minneapolis

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The online headline on the commentary by Carter Averbeck (" Minneapolis once was a great place to live. No more.") does nothing to help solve a problem but only scares people away. A more appropriate headline might have said, "Downtown Minneapolis is growing by leaps and bounds but is experiencing some growing pains." I know many residents downtown who would not agree that their neighborhood is not fit for living anymore. The amount of time and money that has been invested downtown to allow people to live where they work, commute on light rail and choose a bicycle for transportation deserves a more positive headline than the opinion of one writer. One of our nation's worst disasters, 9/11, took place in one of the greatest cities in the world. Does that make it a bad place to live? Please think about the power your headlines hold before choosing them. Some don't bother to read the complete story.

MIKE MACKI, Tonka Bay

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The Star Tribune rightfully states much concern over the impact of downtown violence and the eroding base of patronage due to the same. It is one of many reasons I choose to stay away other than for sporting events. I do, however, find it ironic that your editorial recites sympathy toward law enforcement officers as they are forced to be reactive vs. proactive to prevent crime. Yet this same newspaper is one of the first to prey on an opportunity to condemn actions of law enforcement, often attempting to create public outrage.

If the Star Tribune truly sympathizes with law enforcement, I suggest a couple of things. First, be prudent in your reporting and let the facts surface prior to taking a position of being judge and jury. Second, don't piggyback prior incidents into a current story. Third, begin regularly informing the public of "peace officers" and good works.

I'm guessing most peace officers start their days with hopes that they won't face a stressful situation where they might put their lives or the lives of others at risk. They have tough jobs and, like you and me, are human with common emotions. What is different is they undoubtedly go to work not knowing if they'll get the opportunity to hug their child or kiss their wife at the end of a day.

KURT CAVALER, Champlin

PUBLIC SAFETY ISSUES

Beware the deprivation of liberty based on predictions of crime

The Sept. 24 Opinion Exchange section featured two seemingly unrelated discussions in which a common theme was the public safety rationale for depriving a person of his rights and liberty because he had once committed a crime. In regard to locking up sex offenders indefinitely after jail sentences expire, the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, columnist D.J. Tice provided an excellent description of the fundamental danger of getting to such a result due to political pressures and overreach ("Sex Offender Program puts us in spotlight again"). But in the Star Tribune editorial, you want "repeat offenders off the streets" and a guest columnist complains that "a crime has to happen before [police] can act."

Policies encouraging deprivations of liberty based not on crime but predictions of future crime, often pressured by political forces and moneyed interests (such as those reflected by the Star Tribune Editorial Board), have greatly harmed police-community relations in the past, due to the extreme racial disparities that result, and they have not had any proven impact on safety.

More problematic is the experience of those wrongly affected by such policies, who have had their liberty unconstitutionally deprived and who face the real harms of criminal records even when no conviction ensues.

I am glad to learn from Tice that leading libertarian organizations on the right would join with the ACLU in condemning what is being euphemistically marketed as "proactive policing." The Star Tribune needs to take a lesson from one of its own columnists about the fundamental danger it seeks to promote.

Michael Friedman, Minneapolis

The writer is executive director of the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis.

TRAVEL restrictions

Extension of travel ban to Chad is incomprehensible

I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Chad from 2004 to 2006.

As a returned Chad volunteer, seeing the Trump administration expand its travel ban to include Chad is both heartbreaking and incomprehensible ("New Trump travel order shuts out citizens of 7 nations," Sept. 25, and "Why was Chad put on list?", Sept. 27). The original ban was already bad enough, an immoral and un-American folly, irreconcilable with the values that inspired me and countless others to Peace Corps service. It was rightly struck down by our courts.

Service in Chad was both the greatest challenge and the greatest privilege of my life. I am proud of the work I did there and humbled by the hospitality and openness that my Chadian neighbors showed me.

If only the travel ban's architects and supporters could see the Chad I know. I wish they could meet the little girls and boys who hiked miles each morning to our village school, ready to learn about the world. I wish they could see the way that, despite material poverty, Chadians took care of each other (and me) through good times and bad. Most important, I wish they could hear the genuine admiration and respect for the United States that I encountered so often. I believe this holds true for the other countries on the Trump administration's "enemies list" as well.

If we want our nation to be admired and respected, we must be worthy of it. And the travel ban is not.