Police department, FBI numbers don’t jive
Re: “Crime down in D.C., but still higher that Atlanta or N.Y.,” Beltway Confidential, Dec. 23
Barbara Hollingsworth neglected to note that the crime numbers just released by the FBI were for the first half of the year through the end of June.
Guess what? The Metropolitan Police Department numbers do not match the FBI numbers, especially with regard to robberies (more than 2,100 on our Web site for the first six months of 2009; fewer that 1,960, according to the FBI information). It also appears that MPD is not giving the FBI the correct number of all assaults: 1,242 on the MPD Web site, but 1,591 in the FBI report.
What additional assaults are they reporting, what are they not reporting and who is making that call? This discrepancy will require a significant adjustment when the end-of-the-year numbers are filed.
Finally, how is it that on the MPD Web site, property crime was up for the first six months of 2009, but in the numbers given to the FBI, it is down?
Delroy A. Burton
Executive steward, Fraternal Order of Police
Washington
Political signs say nothing about the candidates
Northern Virginians are being treated to additional seasonal decorations on the highways. The election in January to fill the state senatorial seat vacated by Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli has brought forth political signs touting the two main contenders. But the signs do not tell the public anything whatsoever about the background or views of the candidates. What nonsense!
Year after year, nature’s scene is desecrated by tens of thousands of similar costly, useless signs for candidates for dog catcher, et. al. A sign without vital information about the candidate’s qualifications and positions on issues publicly attests to their disregard toward the wasting of our hard-earned contributions. Enough already!
There is also a contention that the election was held up to allow the Democratic candidate to move his abode into the district to qualify to enter the contest, and that he eventually relocated to a room in a relative’s home in order to register. Has a carpetbagger a la Hillary and Al descended on NoVa?
Joseph P. Carrigan
Fairfax
No political party will be spared Tea Partiers’ rage
Re: “Will the Tea Party Patriots help reverse the vote?” Dec. 21
Professor Hewitt erroneously connects the Tea Party movement with the Republican Party through their mutual dislike of Obamacare. Like the Democrats, the GOP’s power resides in the hands of men and women in Congress. But the Tea Party’s powerful political momentum resides in the Constitution’s preamble: “We, the people … ”
Unfortunately, from the era of Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s top-down New Deal to Republican President George W. Bush’s democratization-of-the-world policies, the White House and Congress have become an autocratic entity foisting policies and laws on the people without first getting our consent. Ignoring public outcry, President Obama is pushing his brand of socialized medicine onto the populace because, like his predecessors, he is a benevolent dictator.
The answer to Professor Hewitt’s question — “Will the Tea Party Patriots reverse the vote on Obamacare?” — is no, because Congress believes its loci of power is in Washington cronyism and back-room deals. The Tea Party will restore the tenets of our government and reverse the policies of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress when the people vote out the incumbents in 2010 and 2012 and replace them with Tea Party leaders.
Helen Logan-Tackett
Fullerton, Calif.
