Privileged players
want adulation? No
OK, NBA and NFL, let me understand your logic. A bunch of incredibly privileged, wealthy athletes are telling me that only Black lives matter, that you are oppressed and in fear for your lives whenever you're in your car, and finally, that I am a racist. And then, you want my support for your team and adulation for you.
That would be a hard no! I'll watch golf until they get bullied into being woke, too.
Michael Toppen
Bella Vista
Advice: Don't resist
or assault officers
There is only one common denominator attributable to essentially all deaths while in police custody. This common denominator is that the victim either resisted arrest or assaulted a police officer, or both. Therefore, the only sure method to reduce deaths and injury is to encourage everyone to neither resist arrest nor assault police officers.
Unfortunately, some politicians, news organizations, and other citizens actually encourage people to resist arrest and assault police officers by:
• Condemning police action before all the facts are available. Even police officers have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
• Failing to adequately notify the public when new evidence vindicates an accused police officer.
• Making false accusations of police brutality or racism.
Police officers have a very difficult job to do, even under the best circumstances. We should not make their jobs harder by encouraging people to resist arrest or assault police officers.
Ray Strain
Fayetteville
A forgiving attitude
can go a long way
From the Sept. 16 sports page of the Democrat-Gazette: "Off the court, (Alvin)Robertson has been arrested 17 times -- first in 1990, and most recently in 2018 -- and charged with offenses including assault, burglary, criminal trespassing, resisting arrest and violating parole. It makes for a complicated legacy. 'Whatever Alvin has done off the court, that has nothing to do with Alvin the basketball player in Arkansas history and what he was as an NBA player,' said Darrell Walker, who was Robertson's teammate with the Razorbacks and played against him in the NBA. 'Those are two different things. You've got to understand, nobody's perfect. If you opened up everybody's closet and pulled out all their stuff, you're going to find something that makes you go, 'Oh boy! Wow! I didn't know that.'"
So true and rightly so. If then such love is given to Alvin Robertson, credited as a potential Hall of Famer if not for injuries, why not J. William Fulbright on the University of Arkansas campus? No, really ... why not?
Dave Johnson
Fayetteville