Festival violence

The shootings following last Sunday’s Dominican Festival at Franklin Park marred what should have been a great day for Boston’s Dominican community.

I agree with  Larry Calderone, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association that there aren’t enough police officers on the force to staff both regular shifts and large scale events. More cops are needed and have been needed for too long now. Both Boston City Councilors Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn both agree that more police are needed at large events such as this. As Flynn stated, the five shootings following the Dominican festival were “senseless.”

Violence should not overshadow the importance of the many festivals held in or near Franklin Park, something is not working well when these shootings keep happening summer after summer.

Over in Boston’s North End, Italian feasts are held on weekends across the summer. There have been a few incidents there but were handled quickly by the action of Boston police and the private security teams that the sponsoring saint societies are required to have at these celebrations. Are the festival organizations over at the many Franklin Park festivals required to augment the police presence by hiring private security?

Every community in Boston should be able to celebrate its culture and heritage without fear of violence upending what should be a joyful time.

As a retired police officer for 28 years, if the mayor states she will not tolerate any violence, she must also agree the City of Boston needs to have more police officers in the Boston Police Department too.

Sergeant Sal Giarratani (Ret.)

Metro Boston Area DMH Police

Boston

Kamala Harris

I’m embarrassed and disturbed that many of my fellow Americans listened to Kamala Devi Harris’s Democratic acceptance speech and say yes, yes, yes Kamala you can do this when elected. Why doesn’t anyone understand that the topics Vice President Harris says she will address when elected president should have been done in the last three-plus years. Basically the Democratic platform is all about evil Trump not getting elected for a second term.

Tony Meschini

Scituate

Hope and joy

As Kamala Harris is now the official Democratic nominee for president and is being extolled as the latest and best politician ever, we note that political hagiography gives a bad name to fulsome praise. In December 2021 after he had been in the Oval Office for only one year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that Joe Biden was a great president, mind you, not a substantial or good chief executive but already Mt. Rushmore worthy. A mere two years further on, the former speaker placed one of many shivs in the great man’s political carcass, his usefulness over once his policies, praised by party apparatchiks far and wide, had earned two thumbs down from ordinary Americans. A fall from Mt. Rushmore is a perfectly valid reason for a bitter valedictory.

Paul Bloustein

Cincinnati, Ohio