BART security questions remain

On the one-year anniversary of the London bombings, I would have thought that unattended packages are a big deal. I was wrong.

I was riding the BART train on July 7 and boarded at Lake Merritt Station. At the next stop, an older woman boarded, noticed an unattended package, asked around for the owner, then sighed and alerted the driver via intercom. We stopped at the next station, then the next, then the next, and nothing happened except more passengers jam-packing the train.

Finally, a BART mechanic or employee walks right by the package. He begins to walk away from the potential bomb, so I decide to chase the man down. After telling him to follow me to the package, he replied, “No, I’m here for a mechanical problem.” After I protested, he radioed it in.

We reach MacArthur and a BART employee walks in. We all point her to the package, and she walks over, picks it up by the handle, and then walks out, swinging it casually.

Where is our homeland security?

Kayvahn Steck-Bayat

El Cerrito

War on drugs

In the Examiner editorial regarding Proposition 36, the assessment is correctly made that it is inappropriate and illegal to change the voter-approved initiative with a bill.

The Examiner is wrong, however, in advocating incarceration as a tool to prevent drug use or relapse — the evidence is inconclusive that this is effective (“Drug treatment law needs teeth,” July 15). It is important to note that Prop. 36 completion rates are comparable to that of Drug Courts, a program that does use incarceration.

Lastly, what the Examiner fails to note is that if a Prop. 36 client opts to abandon treatment, they will have to take a conviction and complete probation successfully.

The so-called war on drugs effort of incarceration and interdiction has proven to be a dismal failure. We need to look to evidence-based harm-reduction models rather than remaining stuck in the fear-based, punitive approach to drug use that costs us billions.

William Buehlman

The City

Deaths of Tongan royalty

I am not Tongan, but I can feel for their community in the wake of the fatal car accident that killed two members of the Tongan royal family (“Judge stands firm: Delgado bail still $3 million,” July 14).

In keeping with their royal bloodlines, their families came across as magnanimous to the car-crash suspect, despite being obviously torn by the recent fatalities and the recklessness in which they occurred.

What in the world is a former honor roll student doing going at speeds of 100 miles per hour at

night and sideswiping vehicles, ultimately killing three, as has been alleged? As a nervous driver, I feel even less confident driving at night with car racing occurring on the freeways.

A strong message needs to be delivered here for the safety of all drivers. The killing of three who were on a mission to improve their community and country is senseless.

Rufino de Leon

The City

The cycles of violence

War in the Middle East is like a recurring nightmare out of an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” or the monster that cyclically comes out to feed in Stephen King’s “It.” It seems to happen as regularly and predictably as clockwork.

One of these days things will get out of control and go too far, and it will burst into a world war, perhaps spelling the end of mankind. For if man can’t learn to live peaceably together, destruction of mankind is the only alternative.

Kenneth L. Zimmerman

Huntington Beach

High-speed rail

Letter-writer Ron Getty calls the proposed high-speed rail project a “boondoggle” and a “taxpayer-robbing” scheme. Mr. Getty wonders why the public should fund the project when the private sector won’t.

One could well ask the same questions about our highway system, our airports and other important parts of our infrastructure. Does Mr. Getty think that these things pay for themselves? The same circumstances apply to them as well as to the high-speed rail. I don’t see the private sector rushing forward to improve our highways, bridges and roads.

The simple truth is that the transportation needs of California cannot be met by building more and more freeways or by expanding air travel.

California needs an efficient and reliable rail system to take the pressure off our overcrowded roads and airspace. Rail is also more energy-efficient and less polluting than road or air travel. Mr. Getty simply doesn’t get it.

Mark Osborne

The City