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I am writing in response to Dennis Fair’s letter (The Mail, 11/6). Mr.
Fair was writing to decry the “persecution” of Officer Payne by his boss (“Overkill” 10/23). I would like to point out four basic flaws in Mr.
Fair’s letter:
1) Mr. Fair equates waxing loquacious about being vastly more competent and important than your boss while speaking to your boss with being a “man.” Last I checked, doing that sort of thing meant being “unemployed.” This behavior is made all the more ironic by the fact that Officer Payne’s speech was preceded by his being informed that there were concerns about his discipline.
2) Officer Payne may have emptied his weapon into a wounded man lying prone and immobile on the ground at close range. If this is true, then Officer Payne is not “dedicated” or merely “aggressive” as Mr. Fair asserts. If this is true, Officer Payne should be an “officer” no longer. We don’t need that kind of “man” patrolling the streets. And I don’t need to be shot at (one of Mr. Fair’s opinion litmus tests) to know this.
3) Mr. Fair’s statement”I’m not going to allow what citizens think to determine how I police”startled me. Whom is Mr. Fair protecting? Is he going to protect the community whether they like it or not? Is that because he and only he knows best? Mr. Fair’s tone resembles the one that Officer Payne is alleged to have adopted. Personally, I’m hoping either that Mr. Fair and Officer Payne are the same person or that this is a joke. The alternativethat there is more than one person like that on the police forcescares the hell out of me.
4) Mr. Fair states that with more officers like Payne, there would be less children losing their lives in weapon accidents. If those proposed officers were anything like the “man” I read about, then that statement would be true only because the children would be shot intentionally.
Cleveland Park
via the Internet