Letters: Renee Good slaying should go before a judge and jury

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Good slaying should go before judge, jury

The brutal killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer was not self-defense. You cannot defend yourself from a speeding car by shooting the driver. As in the case of Good, the car keeps going.

Why then did the officer draw his handgun when Good was backing her car away from him? Was he thinking “She’s going to try to kill me“? No, there was nothing in their interactions that would lead to that thought.

The most plausible explanation is that he drew his weapon to prevent her from getting away. And then he shot her in the head for the same reason. Self-defense? A jury should decide.

Greg Smyers
Lafayette

Remove Trump before he destroys republic

Terrorist? Bully? Tyrant? Or worse?

Whatever you call him, unfortunately, he is our president. All of the Democratic leaders and people of the world know him for what he is. Even Vladimir Putin knows it and and benefits from his undermining of NATO with his strong-arm tactics and his crazy attempt to get Greenland.

If you say, do or win something that he does not agree with, he sends his flunkies in to punish, maim and even kill. Why are our law enforcement and legal system afraid to rein him in and end his reign of terror? No one under him has the intestinal fortitude or smarts to say no to him.

He has made a mockery of everything America stands for in just one short year. He needs to be impeached, removed and jailed, and held accountable for all of his illegal actions.

Mark Hertstein
Pittsburg

King’s words carry relevance today

What is so different today?

“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people who would bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time.” These are the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. He also wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly,” in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963. And finally, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

What is so different today?

Daniel Smith
Concord

In new revolution, voting is best weapon

We are now 250 years into American democracy. The Constitution of the United States was written as a refusal to have kings or monarchs ruling the land.

Now, after all this time, we still wind up with a man and his followers who want to dismantle and eliminate the Constitution. Why? It’s power and riches for themselves and the drive to eliminate whatever protections exist for citizens. Americans must fight a new war, one that must save the republic from a coward who wants it all for himself — him and his ignorant acolytes. You must recognize the incompetence of all his underlings as a means to this end.

Here is where voting matters.

Stuart Shicoff
Martinez

Trump’s Greenland claims refuted by reality

Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence as usual, that the U.S. needs Greenland for national security and that Denmark is doing a poor job defending the island from Russia and China. Trump has added that Russia and China have a significant naval presence around Greenland.

However, Danish and Nordic diplomats have called his claims “unfounded” as tracking data shows no such presence. Furthermore, on Jan. 16, Reuters reported that Major General Soren Andersen of Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command stated that Denmark’s concern is Russian activity in the region, and that Denmark conducts surveillance using patrol boats, aircraft, helicopters and satellite technology. Andersen said there were no Chinese or Russian ships near Greenland, though he added that a Russian research vessel was located 310 nautical miles away. “That’s the closest one,” he said, adding that NATO allies maintain “a good picture of the situation up here.”

Bob Benson
Lafayette

Will what’s left of food stores go to the hungry

In July 2025, the administration incinerated 500 tons of emergency food aid for children of Afghanistan and Pakistan, enough food to feed 1.5 million children for a week. This is not just because the administration cut funding to USAID, but because the administration prevented the food from being mobilized to those who needed it before it expired.

Marco Rubio stated aid would only be provided to those governments aligned with American values. Then why not distribute the food to those with food insecurities in the United States? The Trump administration has no regard for any poor population, even our own, or that food would have gone to those who needed it.

There are still about 55,000 tons of usable food stores that have a shelf life of up to a year. Let’s see how much makes it to starving populations or ends up in the incinerator.

Frank Jones
Concord