Disgraced Ald. Edward Burke has now officially joined a long list of convicted felons who once served proudly and powerfully in the Chicago City Council. As his just reward, he will now have to live out his days with a tarnished legacy, as well as being a total embarrassment to his city, his family and his Irish-Catholic roots.
Though Chicagoans have been forced to endure corruption for decades, Burke’s conviction should serve as a stark reminder that politics as usual in the Windy City is not a relic but a tradition the city is incapable of escaping.
Bob Ory, Elgin
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Put postal police back on the streets
I write regarding your recent editorial (“Having postal police on patrol could make the job safer for mail carriers,” Dec. 18) and a response by David L. Milligan, who stated “lifting the restrictions on the U.S. Postal Service Police is way off the mark.”
Milligan asserted that postal facility workplace violence incidents “have all but vanished since [postal police officers] have been concentrated on where the problem was.”
That assertion is untrue. While it is true that since the August 2020 decision to limit postal police to mail facilities there have been no workplace violence incidents, the same holds true for the previous decade and a half, when postal police officers were protecting letter carriers and the mail away from postal real estate. No postal facility violence took place during that period.
Additionally, postal police officers, for the past five decades, were policing in local communities where they enforced federal law pertaining to the Postal Service, the mail and postal employees.
I served as a postal police officer in Chicago for 22 years until my retirement in 2017. Along with my fellow officers, we patrolled in communities in which letter carriers were under frequent attack.
We made a difference. Our presence deterred crime, made letter carriers feel safe, and effected arrests. Our officers were often first responders and canvassed neighborhoods for witnesses when carriers were assaulted, robbed and shot.
Uniformed postal police officers must be returned to the high-crime letter carrier routes they once patrolled. After all, isn’t proactive policing and crime prevention at the heart of effective policing strategy?
Jim Bjork, retired postal police officer, Fox River Grove
Chicago needs central bus terminal
Your proposal that Chicago purchase the Greyhound Bus Terminal is an excellent idea. As Chicago is a major transfer hub for airlines and Amtrak, so it is for the bus industry.
It would not be good for passengers to be standing outside on a street corner at midnight waiting for a bus in inclement weather with no shelter, no seating, no security, no restrooms and no food options.
Kenneth White, La Grange Park
Another way to stop drag racers
This is in response to the Sun-Times article on street takeovers in McKinley Park. There is an old-school, simple solution to this problem: Turn on fire hydrants to wet the streets.
Stunt drivers and drag racers cannot control their vehicles on wet pavement and will stop performing. Reasonable warning by the police must be given to prevent accidents and injury.
Michael C. Flynn, retired Chicago police lieutenant, Norwood Park
