MAILBAG - Feb. 16, 2009

Police should heed their own call

I knocked off work a bit early recently and decided to hop on my bicycle and head to the gym. After a good workout at 24-Hour Fitness, I hopped back on the bike for the two-mile uphill ride home.

As I proceeded north on Louise Street, I decided to pass the time by counting the number of people I observed talking on cell phones while driving. My total count over my two-mile commute between 4:05 p.m. and 4:20 p.m.: 18. Seventeen women and one man. The most disturbing of the 18 was a Glendale police officer driving a Glendale police car with a cell phone glued to her ear.

The officer was not parked; she was driving south on Louise Street. I know what you’re thinking; maybe she was talking on her police radio. Nope, the cell phone was in her left hand, pressed against her left ear. You hold a radio to your mouth when speaking.

I realize that in “emergency situations,” there might be many reasons why a police officer may need to use a cell phone while driving. This did not appear to be an emergency situation, as she was driving down the street at about 20 to 25 mph.

It’s no wonder that many Glendale citizens ignore this law. How can we expect the Glendale Police Department to enforce these rules (“In uniform, police catch few drivers texting,” Jan. 21) if they do not obey them?

WILLIAM COLLINS

Glendale

Throw building out with the bathwater

I remember a water shortage in Cambria, California. They had a moratorium on all building while they had a real water shortage.

Enough of Glendale Water & Power making a ruse or threat, trying to justify their jobs by talking about rationing water so they can justify another water price increase (“Water rationing is on tap,” Wednesday).

If we have a real problem, let us have a moratorium on all building, hotels, apartments, swimming pools and oversize houses; then the public will go for water rationing.

Glendale City Council, please take charge and get us a building moratorium if we have a real water shortage.

FRANK SAUER

Glendale

Ration plan doesn’t hold much water

Regarding the Glendale News-Press article “Water rationing is on tap” (Wednesday), I find it interesting that the city wants us to conserve water.

A fire hydrant just south of the intersection of Greenmont Drive and Beaudry Terrace has been leaking nonstop, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, for months now, even after repeated calls by myself regarding the leak.

It is a steady stream, not a drip.

The city apparently does not think it is important.

BOB GREGG

Glendale

Cuba looks greener from the other side

I read with interest your article “The differing tastes of Cuba,” by Jeremy Oberstein (Jan. 27). We Cuban Americans have for a long time been puzzled by the support given to Castro’s dictatorship, one of the most repressive regimes in the world for the last 50 years, by some fellow Hispanics in the U.S. such as Carlos Ugalde, the professor mentioned in the article.

It is clear that those who speak highly of the Cuban government have never lived under it. Ugalde may have visited Cuba several times but always as a guest of the Cuban regime, for a few days or weeks, staying in government-provided housing, and never having to worry about what to eat or if he would be arrested for calling for free elections of freedom of the press in the island, a fate too common for Cuban citizens.

The Castro tyranny has not brought “social justice and human dignity” to its people. No system of government that controls the lives of its citizens the way that they do in Cuba can do that. There is no social justice or human dignity without individual liberties and the ability to hold free and fair elections.

I wonder if Ugalde ever realizes that he is free to criticize our government here without any consequences, while Cuban college professors cannot openly disagree with the Cuban government, under threat of jail or exile. And as to Porto’s Bakery, it’s my favorite place in Burbank.

ALEXIS I. TORRES

Burbank