Mailbag: Costa Mesa mayor ignores his role in decreased police staffing

I read the letter by Costa Mesa Mayor Steve Mensinger (“Police Chief shows impressive leadership,” Sept. 10). Mensinger is right: We are proud of our police chief and officers. However, I am disturbed that the person who caused many of the problems for the police department has not taken any responsibility for the decrease in police personnel.

Chief Rob Sharpnack has done a great job of recruitment, including some lateral transfers, and with an increased police force we are seeing some return of specialized units. Recruitment of recent academy graduates has necessitated additional training on the force, and it is great to see trained officers coming to Costa Mesa.

Mensinger needs to take responsibility for his choices that led to the understaffed police department. The hiring freeze, the lawsuit against the police association, the demeaning attitude from the mayor and mayor pro tem, have kept the force low, necessitated excessive overtime and left our city at peril.

Sadly for our city, he did choose, as it has been said, to abandon his fiduciary and leadership responsibility to the city by filing and continuing with the lawsuit against the police association.

Although I see many campaign signs for him, we must not forget that he facilitated the decreased police force, filed the lawsuit, paints the motels with such a broad brush and has not cooperated with other cities in the county on means to limit sober living homes. Yes, our police force does have a tremendous amount of work to do.

His inability to take responsibility for his actions shows us that he should not be re-elected.

Margaret Mooney

Costa Mesa

Hypocrisy a bad quality in politicians

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out what bothers me most, about myself and others. Turns out it is hypocrisy. When I encounter it, I feel sick. It’s a feeling that goes back decades.

In high school, teachers and administrators urged my classmates and me to attend college. I was a B student but an A athlete. When I proudly told my counselor I’d been accepted at USC, he laughed and said, “You’re going to SC? Now I’ve heard everything.” I was devastated but determined to prove that hypocritical you-know-what wrong.

Funny, when Richard Nixon told the media he was not a crook, guess what? It turns out he was. When he resigned the presidency, I reminded myself, “Cheaters never prosper.”

Another president who cheated was Bill Clinton. How hypocritical was it for him to tell the American people he didn’t have sex with a White House intern?

Then there was George W. Bush (again) and his missing WMDs. I’m not sure if he caved under pressure from Dick Cheney or not, but the president presented faulty intelligence to justify his decision to start another war. It was hypocrisy at its worst because thousands of lives were lost and billions spent based on a tattered house of cards.

Today, it’sDonald Trump. He’s a hypocrite of unbelievable proportions. When Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American soldier killed in action, told the world Trump hasn’t sacrificed anything, The Donald immediately responded by tweeting horrible things about Mr. Khan.

Days later, he accepted a Purple Heart medal from a veteran who was wounded in action. Trump’s reaction was classic: “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart,” he reported. “This was much easier.” Imagine what Trump might have said had he actually served in the military and/or seen combat?

Life is tough. It isn’t always pretty. Sometimes there are no happy endings. Still, we push on. That’s what we humans do. I just wish some people weren’t so hypocritical. It would make things a lot easier for the rest of us.

Denny Freidenrich

Laguna Beach